a 


BY 


MORRIS   H.   MORGAN 

PROFESSOR  OF  CLASSICAL  PHILOLOGY  IN    HARVARD 
UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK  • :  •  CINCINNATI  • :  •  CHICAGO 

AMERICAN    BOOK   COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1910,  BY 
MORRIS  H.  MORGAN. 

EHTESED  AT  STATIONERS'  HALL,  LONDOH. 


MORGAN,    ADDBESSE8   AND   ESSAYS. 

w.  P.   a 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

THE  contents  of  this  volume,  with  the  exception  of  the 
first  address,  have  already  appeared  in  print  at  intervals 
during  the  past  seventeen  years  in  the  different  periodicals 
which  are  cited  under  each  title.  Consequently  they  do 
not  form  a  real  unity,  for  they  are  sometimes  merely  the 
natural  outcome  of  occasions,  sometimes  the  result  of  more 
continuous  thought  bestowed  upon  a  single  subject.  They 
are  not  chronologically  arranged.  Two  addresses  dealing 
with  classical  study  in  general  are  placed  first ;  then  some- 
thing in  lighter  vein ;  then  certain  detached  notes  followed 
by  longer  studies  in  a  Latin  author  on  whom  much  of  my 
time  has  been  spent  for  several  years ;  and,  finally,  I  have 
ventured  to  add  three  copies  of  occasional  verse. 

CAMBRIDGE,  June  28,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS 5 

THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS 34 

THE  REAL  PERSIUS 62 

THE  WATER  SUPPLY  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 75 

2KHNAO,  2KHNE12,  2KHNOO 85 

NOTES  ON  LYSIAS 106 

NOTES  ON  PERSIUS 118 

ON  THE  WORD  PETITOR 135 

ON  QVIN  WITH  THE  SUBJUNCTIVE  IN  QUESTIONS     .        .        .137 
QUINTILIAN'S  QUOTATIONS  FROM  HORACE         .        .        .        .140 

ON  CICERO,  QVINCT.  13 142 

THE  DATE  OF  THE  ORATION  PRO  Roscio  COMOEDO      .        .  143 

THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS 159 

NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS 214 

THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS     .        .        .        .        .        .        .  233 

OCCASIONAL  VERSES 273 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


THE   STUDENT   OF  THE   CLASSICS1 

IN  January,  1644,  Mr.  John  Evelyn,  an  English  gentle- 
man who  was  then  on  the  grand  tour  of  the  continent, 
visited  the  University  of  Paris,  and  afterwards  made  the 
following  entry  in  his  now  famous  Diary :  '  We  found  a 
grave  Doctor  in  his  chaire,  with  a  multitude  of  auditors, 
who  all  write  as  he  dictates ;  and  this  they  call  a  Course.' 

It  is  obvious  that  worthy  Mr.  Evelyn,  accustomed  to 
Oxford  methods,  looked  with  some  suspicion  upon  this 
manner  of  imparting  instruction,  yet  we  all  know  that  it 
is  far  more  prevalent  to-day  than  it  was  two  hundred  and 
sixty  years  ago,  and  that  it  is  not  confined  to  the  conti- 
nent of  Europe.  If  the  shade  of  Evelyn  ever  visits  these 
shores,  he  finds  it  flourishing  —  some  might  say,  'like  a 
green  bay  tree '  —  not  far  from  the  place  where  I  am 
speaking.  It  is  a  comfortable  method  —  comfortable  for 
the  professor,  who  can  pour  forth  his  accumulated  floods 
of  learning  undisturbed  by  the  feeling  that  it  is  his  duty 
to  find  out  whether  his  hearers  have  prepared  themselves 
to  appreciate  what  he  is  saying,  —  uninterrupted,  also,  at 
least  in  our  larger  lecture  courses,  by  questioning  from 

1  An  address  before  the  Harvard  Classical  Club,  March  2,  1905. 
5 


6  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

adolescent  youth,  —  and  sure  that  no  better  authority  than 
himself  is  present  to  dispute  his  dogmas.  This  last  com- 
fortable certainty  was  not  assured  in  Evelyn's  day ;  for  he 
goes  on  to  record  that  a  Cavalier  who  was  in  his  party 
suddenly  '  started  up,  and  beginning  to  argue,  he  so  baffled 
the  Professor  that  with  universal  applause  they  all  rose  up 
and  did  him  greate  honors,  waiting  on  him  to  the  very  streete 
and  our  coach,  testifying  greate  satisfaction.' 

It  might  sometimes  be  well  if  we  professors  could  feel 
that  we  were  subject  at  any  moment  to  correction  by  a 
more  learned  visitor.  The  present  method,  however,  is 
comfortable  not  merely  to  professors,  but  also  to  students. 
And  to  these  its  comfort  brings  with  it  a  great  danger. 
I  do  not  now  refer  to  the  danger  of  irregularity  in  work,  or 
to  the  postponing  of  serious  study  of  a  topic  until  late  in 
the  days  of  the  course  and  sometimes  even  to  the  last  few 
days  before  the  examination  is  held.  This  is  not  in  itself 
dangerous ;  it  may  in  some  cases  be  even  advantageous, 
if  the  time  thus  unemployed  in  a  particular  course  is  sys- 
tematically given  to  something  better.  The  danger  of 
which  I  am  thinking  is  far  more  fundamental.  It  is  the 
danger  of  acquiring  certain  wrong  ideas  about  methods  of 
learning  and  about  the  way  in  which  you  can  make  of 
yourselves  scholars.  I  say  'make  of  yourselves.'  For 
you  can  be  perfectly  sure  of  one  thing,  which  is  that  no 
teacher,  however  brilliant  or  learned,  can  make  scholars 
of  you  (whether  you  want  to  be  philologians  or  historians 
or  geologists),  if  you  sit  passive.  To  use  the  terminology 
of  Aristotle,  the  teacher  can,  if  he  is  a  good  teacher,  give 
you  '  the  how,'  but  he  can  never  give  you  '  the  what.'  He 
can  point  to  methods,  he  can  '  show  you  the  way  wherein 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  7 

you  must  walk  and  the  work  that  you  must  do,'  but  then  he 
must  leave  you  to  do  the  work  for  yourselves.  Scholar- 
ship cannot  be  melted  up  and  poured  into  you,  or  chopped 
up  fine  and  spooned  into  your  mouths.  You  have  to 
chew  on  it  yourselves;  you  must  become  metaphorical 
Fletcherites  and  chew  on  it  hard  and  long.  But  observe 
a  difference :  the  Fletcherites  do  their  chewing  in  public, 
and  they  are  not  a  pleasant  spectacle.  He  who  would 
become  a  scholar  has  to  chew  in  private ;  all  by  himself 
his  work  has  to  be  done. 

Now  exactly  here  I  believe  lies  the  great  danger  of 
lecture  courses,  —  that  the  auditors  are  too  apt  to  think 
that  in  the  lecture  course  they  are  getting  the  real  thing. 
Far  from  it!  The  lecture  course  can  and  ought  to  be 
nothing  but  a  skeleton.  It  must  be  clothed  with  the  flesh 
and  blood,  which  are  the  life,  by  each  auditor  for  himself 
in  private  study,  if  he  is  to  get  anything  more  from  the 
course  than  the  power  to  pass  an  examination  in  it,  which 
is  the  most  unimportant  thing  of  all.  From  my  own  obser- 
vation of  life  in  this  and  other  American  universities,  I  am 
convinced  that  the  principal  failing  of  American  students 
is  the  failing  to  recognize  the  necessity  of  this  private  study. 
Do  not  mistake  my  meaning  here.  I  am  not  making  a 
plea  for  specialization  or  for  what  is  called  'original  re- 
search.' These,  at  least  in  our  department,  have  hardly 
any  rights  in  the  undergraduate  curriculum,  and  even  in 
the  Graduate  School  they  should  be  approached  with 
caution.  The  reason  is  that  a  philologian  must  be  many- 
sided  before  he  can  be  one-sided.  And  in  particular  he 
must  always  remember  that  a  man  who  means  to  be  a 
classical  philologian  must  first  of  all  become  acquainted 


g  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

with  as  much  as  possible  of  the  contents  of  the  Greek  and 
Latin  authors.  That  is,  his  reading  should  have  been 
carried  on  extensively.  As  the  great  scholar  Ritschl  said : 
'  It  is  the  fundamental  knowledge  of  the  ancient  languages 
which  makes  the  philologian,  and  marks  him  off  from  the 
mere  antiquarian  or  historian  who  works  with  translations.' 

And  American  students  should  awake  to  this  need  of 
broad  reading  as  early  as  possible  in  their  careers,  because 
in  our  preparatory  schools  the  curriculum  in  classics  is  so 
very  meagre,  compared  with  that  of  the  schools  of  Eng- 
land, Germany,  and  France.  Much  of  the  Greek  and 
Latin  which  we  read  in  our  colleges  has  already  been  read 
by  English,  French,  and  German  boys  in  their  school  days. 
This  is,  of  course,  because  the  general  school  curriculum 
in  their  countries  is  so  much  narrower  in  the  number  of 
subjects  taught  than  it  is  in  ours.  Whether  they  or  we  are 
wiser,  does  not  now  matter.  The  fact  is  that  they  have 
much  more  time  to  give  to  the  reading  of  Greek  and 
Latin  in  their  schools  than  we  have  and  so  those  boys  be- 
come acquainted  with  a  wider  circle  of  ancient  literature. 
But  think  how  confined  ours  is,  —  especially  in  Greek, 
where  scarcely  anything  is  read  except  portions  of  Xeno- 
phon's  Anabasis  and  portions  of  Homer.  This  used  not  to 
be  the  case  in  America,  and  the  requirements  in  Greek 
for  admission  to  Harvard  College  once  called  for  some 
acquaintance  with  many  more  authors. 

As  one  enters  Sanders  Theatre  and  looks  up,  the  first 
thing  to  attract  the  eye  is  that  beautiful  window  which 
represents  Athene  tying  a  fillet  of  honor  about  the  top  of 
a  Greek  column.  The  window  is  an  appropriate  memorial 
to  Cornelius  Con  way  Felton,  once  professor  of  Greek  and 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  9 

afterwards  president  of  Harvard  College.  By  the  way,  his 
professorship,  the  Eliot  Professorship  of  Greek  Literature, 
has  been  held  by  a  line  of  remarkable  men  of  whom  the 
university  is  proud,  and  about  whom  every  student  of 
the  classics  here  ought  to  know  something.  I  mean 
Everett,  Popkin,  Felton,  and  Goodwin.  I  have  often 
thought  that  it  would  be  well  if  a  lecture  were  occasionally 
delivered,  for  the  benefit  of  our  younger  Harvard  men  and 
of  students  from  other  colleges,  upon  the  lives  and  work 
of  our  professors  in  this  department.  We  ought  never 
to  forget  those  who  labored  here  in  the  days  which  we 
sometimes  unthinkingly  call  the  'days  of  small  things/ 
It  does  not  follow  that  we  are  better  because  we  are  bigger. 
By  the  way  again,  the  second  of  these  Eliot  professors, 
Popkin,  seems  to  have  been  as  early  as  anybody  here  to  hint 
at  the  benefits  of  an  elective  system  of  studies.  This  was 
toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  At  one  time 
during  his  undergraduate  life  (1788-1792),  he  became  dis- 
couraged at  his  apparent  inability  to  make  progress  in  a 
certain  study  which  was  a  part  of  the  required  course. 
And  he  then  wrote  in  a  document  called  '  Reflections  on 
Myself '  the  following  words :  '  This  weakness  of  the 
intellect,  arising  from  dejection,  is  a  strong  instance  of  a 
proposition  which  I  have  heretofore  advanced;  namely, 
that  it  is  a  great  bar  to  one's  advancement  in  science  to 
have  a  constant  conviction  of  his  weakness.  Hence  I 
inferred  that  it  was  a  great  disadvantage  to  the  cause  of 
literature  to  oblige  every  one  in  a  university  to  attend  to 
studies  in  which  he  could  not  make  any  progress.' 

But  to  return  to  Professor  Felton :  he  was  the  compiler 
of  several  useful  books,  and  among  them  was  a  Greek 


IO  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Reader.  For  thirty  years,  from  1840  down  to  1871,  the 
matter  contained  in  this  Reader  was  the  requirement  in 
Greek  for  admission  to  Harvard  College.  What  were  its 
contents?  Rich  in  variety.  It  included  twenty-eight  prose 
fables  of  Aesop,  twenty-seven  dialogues  by  Lucian,  forty- 
one  pages  of  selections  from  Xenophon,  ten  from  Thu- 
cydides,  thirteen  from  Lysias,  seventeen  from  Herodotus, 
thirteen  from  Homer,  as  well  as  selections  from  Anacreon, 
Sappho,  Simonides,  Euripides,  Aristophanes,  and  several 
other  poets. 

Now  here  again  there  is  danger  lest  you  mistake  me. 
I  am  not  suggesting  that  we  ought  to  go  back  to  Felton's 
Reader  or  to  adopt  any  similar  collection.  I  am  not  even 
suggesting  that  we  ought  to  make  a  change  in  our  require- 
ments for  admission  to  college.  I  am  simply  indicating 
the  condition  of  things  as  they  are.  It  is  clear  that  those 
who  made  a  good  use  of  this  Reader  while  in  school  got 
a  much  wider  conception  of  the  variety  and  richness  of 
Greek  literature  than  you  got  or  than  I  got.  I  was  better 
off  than  you  in  this  respect ;  for  I  was  introduced  to  Greek 
through  Goodwin's  Reader,  which  contained  selections 
from  Xenophon,  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  and  Plato;  and, 
besides  this,  of  course  I  had  Homer.  You,  or  at  least  the 
great  majority  of  you,  had  no  prose  besides  Xenophon. 

This  being  the  case,  and  coming  to  college,  as  you  do, 
so  limited  in  your  conceptions  of  what  ancient  literature 
contains,  the  necessity  is  strong  upon  you  to  acquaint 
yourselves  with  it.  To  accomplish  this,  you  are  better 
equipped  than  our  fathers  were,  unless  our  modern  system 
of  teaching  is  a  failure;  for  you  have  had  training  in 
what  is  called  'reading  at  sight,'  — that  is,  training  in 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  II 

grappling  with  the  difficulties  of  a  new  passage  without 
the  aid  of  a  lexicon  or  a  grammar.  And  nothing  can  take 
the  place  of  the  constant  and  devoted  reading  which  I  am 
now  urging  upon  you.  It  may  be  carried  on  in  one  of 
two  ways ;  in  fact,  both  are  desirable.  First,  there  is  the 
exact  and  careful  reading  which  you  do  when  preparing 
yourself  in  some  course  for  the  passage  which  is  likely  to 
come  up  for  the  day,  so  as  to  be  able  to  appreciate  what 
the  instructor  or  other  members  of  the  course  may  say 
about  it,  and  so  as  to  be  ready  yourself  to  contribute  your 
share  of  information  or  (quite  as  valuable)  question  about 
this  passage.  In  this  kind  of  reading  you  work,  of 
course,  with  all  the  aids  that  you  can  gather  round  you 
—  lexicon,  grammar,  commentaries,  and  commentaries  in 
other  languages  than  English,  if  you  can  manage  others. 
And  here  let  me  interject  a  remark  which  I  have  made 
to  some  of  you  before.  Do  not  think  that  you  need  a 
teacher  or  must  '  take  a  course '  in  order  to  get  a  reading 
knowledge  of  a  language  that  is  new  to  you.  A  man  with 
brains  who  knows  Latin  and  French  can  by  himself  in  a 
short  time  learn  enough  Italian  and  Spanish  to  enable  him 
to  use  books  written  in  these  languages ;  and  anybody 
who  knows  English  and  German  can  easily  learn  to  read 
Dutch.  As  for  German,  Macaulay  learned  to  read  it  dur- 
ing his  voyage  to  India,  beginning  with  Luther's  transla- 
tion of  the  New  Testament, — an  excellent  way  in  which 
to  learn  a  new  language  is  this.  The  Duke  of  Wellington 
learned  to  read  Spanish,  after  his  appointment  to  com- 
mand in  the  Peninsula,  by  using  a  Spanish  translation  of 
the  English  Prayer  Book. 

The  second  way  of   reading  may  be  called  current  or 


12  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

cursory.  It  is  carried  on  to  introduce  one's  self  to  the 
general  contents  of  a  new  author  —  to  a  conception  of  his 
style,  and  to  a  knowledge  of  the  sort  of  matter  which  one 
may  expect  to  find  in  him.  For  one  cannot  get  intro- 
duced to  all,  or  even  to  all  the  important,  authors  in  the 
regular  college  courses.  This  second  way  may  also  be 
followed  in  the  completion  of  authors  whom  you  have  be- 
gun in  one  of  your  college  courses.  Thus,  if  a  student 
has  read  six  books  of  Tacitus  or  six  books  of  Homer 
under  a  good  teacher,  why  should  he  not  read  all  the  rest 
of  these  authors  by  himself  ?  As  for  the  method  in  this 
cursory  kind  of  reading,  you  might  select  the  best  printed 
text  without  notes  and  push  ahead  with  some  impetus,  — 
never  thinking,  however,  of  daily  progress,  —  never  set- 
ting a  stint  of  so  many  pages  to  be  done  each  day,  which 
is  a  method  sure  to  be  a  failure  in  the  end,  as  you  hasten 
to  finish  your  day's  stint.  You  may  set  a  certain  period 
of  time  for  daily  reading,  but  never  an  extent  of  space. 
If  you  find  that  the  author  bores  you,  try  another;  we 
cannot  all  like  everything,  and  of  course  some  Greek  and 
Latin  authors  are  not  worth  reading  at  all  by  the  general 
student.  Still,  you  should  at  least  make  the  attempt  to 
interest  yourself  in  all  the  authors  whom  the  world  has 
agreed  to  call  the  greatest,  and,  as  you  read,  you  should 
try  to  imagine  yourself  in  the  author's  own  time  and 
surroundings. 

"I<roK  dv  T«  epoiro  —  perhaps  somebody  may  ask,  '  But 
where  am  I  to  get  the  time  to  do  this  reading  ? '  Some 
two  years  ago,  an  inquiry  was  made  of  large  numbers  of 
our  undergraduates  about  the  time  which  they  found  it 
necessary  to  devote  to  regular  work  on  their  courses  here. 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  13 

From  the  replies  it  did  not  appear  that  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  a  man's  time  was  thus  spent ;  certainly  much 
was  left  which  could  be  usefully  employed  in  reading. 
And  then,  how  about  vacations?  Did  you  ever  reflect 
that  if  the  summer  vacation  is  entirely  given  up  to  recrea- 
tion, you  have,  during  your  college  course,  wasted  an  entire 
year  of  life  so  far  as  progress  in  scholarship  is  concerned  ? 
This  time  ought  to  be  used ;  I  do  not  mean  every  day  of 
it,  but  a  reasonable  part  of  it.  It  is  the  best  time  in  which 
to  read  the  authors ;  it  is  the  time  during  which  the  earnest 
student  in  England  does  his  hardest  reading ;  and  we  may 
well  take  pattern  by  his  example.  For  think  what  an  ad- 
vantage vacation  has  over  term-time.  Here  at  the  uni- 
versity we  live  in  the  midst  of  distractions :  we  hurry 
from  our  rooms  to  the  lecture  hall;  from  there  to  Me- 
morial or  to  the  club ;  from  there  to  the  Soldiers'  Field ; 
then  perhaps  to  town  for  the  evening;  or  if  we  stay  at 
home,  how  seldom  is  it  that  we  get  a  whole  evening  to 
ourselves,  without  interruption !  But  in  the  summer,  how 
much  more  peaceful  and  undisturbed  we  are.  Then  we 
can  get  really  intimate  with  an  ancient  writer,  by  having 
long  sessions  'with  him,  and  it  is  with  him  as  with  a  man  of 
to-day  :  only  by  sitting  long  with  him  can  one  come  to  that 
intimate  friendship  which  enables  one  to  get  the  best  which 
he  has  to  give.  Take  Livy,  for  instance  :  on  what  terms 
are  you  with  him  ?  '  Oh  ! '  you  say,  '  I  had  him  when  I 
was  a  freshman,'  —  as  forsooth  you  might  say,  'I  had 
measles,'  —  as  if  Livy  were  a  sort  of  disease  which  you 
were  glad  to  get  over.  But  this  is  not  knowing  Livy. 
Have  you  ever  seen  him  wink  his  eye  at  you?  —  as,  for 
instance,  when  he  is  telling  how  the  Roman  king  shouted 


I4  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

out  a  sham  order  to  his  own  troops  very  loudly,  in  order 
to  deceive  the  enemy.  This,  of  course,  was  in  the  ancient 
legend  which  Livy  was  following,  but  he  knew  perfectly 
well  that  the  enemy,  being  Etruscans,  would  not  have  un- 
derstood the  King's  language;  he  recalled,  however,  that 
among  them  were  some  troops  from  the  town  of  Fidenae, 
which  had  been  made  a  Roman  colony  but  had  revolted 
and  joined  the  Etruscans  again.  So  he  throws  in  the 
remark:  'magna  pars  Fidenatium,  ut  qui  coloni  additi 
Romanis  essent,  Latine  sciebant.'  Who  cannot  see  him 
wink  as  he  wrote  these  words  ?  Who  can  have  anything 
but  a  feeling  of  pity  for  our  principal  German  commenta- 
tor whose  absolute  lack  of  a  sense  of  humor  is  shown  by 
his  solemn  note :  '  The  Etruscans,  except  these,  did  not 
understand  the  Latin  language ;  see  9,  36,  3.'  I  have 
never  felt  the  need  of  seeing  9,  36,  3.  I  am  willing  to 
grant,  without  looking  it  up,  that  they  didn't,  and  that  the 
people  of  Fidenae  didn't,  and  that  Livy  knew  that  the 
people  of  Fidenae  didn't,  —  and  I  would  add  that  this  was 
exactly  why  he  threw  in  the  statement  that  they  did.  Is 
it  necessary  to  put  up  a  signboard  with  a  printed  notice, 
'  The  following  is  a  joke '  ?  It  seems  so,  for  many  Euro- 
peans ;  but  let  not  us  Americans  be  so  stolid. 

And  further,  let  us  not  be  led  by  passages  like  this  into 
the  mistaken  notion  that  Livy,  as  an  historian,  had  no 
critical  sense.  It  is  a  notion  which  is  far  too  prevalent  in 
our  times ;  our  editions  of  Livy  and  our  histories  of  Latin 
literature  are  impregnated  with  it.  Sometimes  one  feels 
as  if  many  of  these  modern  critics  had  never  read  Livy 
himself  with  any  thoughtfulness.  The  fact  is  that  Livy  is 
extremely  careful  to  tell  us  that  what  he  is  relating  in  his 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  15 

early  books  is  wholly  legendary,  and  that  there  was  no 
possible  way  to  make  it  anything  else.  That  is  to  say,  he 
realized,  as  fully  as  do  his  modern  critics,  the  insufficiency 
of  evidence  for  the  early  period,  —  more  fully  perhaps, 
for  he  knew  that  there  was  no  evidence  to  be  got,  while 
they  censure  him  for  not  finding  evidence,  though  they 
are  very  careful  not  to  tell  where  it  was  to  be  found. 
Thus  in  his  preface  to  the  History  he  says  :  '  As  for  the 
traditions  touching  what  took  place  before  the  city  was 
founded  or  designed,  things  rather  the  fruit  of  poetic 
fiction  than  founded  upon  any  pure  records  of  facts,  I  intend 
neither  to  affirm  nor  to  deny  them.'  That  is,  he  intends 
no  more  than  to  give  his  reader  the  legends  as  he  finds 
them.  Then,  again,  at  the  very  opening  of  his  sixth  book, 
which  follows  immediately  upon  his  account  of  the  capture 
of  Rome  by  the  Gauls,  he  warns  the  reader  against  the 
credibility  of  the  whole  work  down  to  this  point,  when  he 
says :  '  I  have  already  given  you  an  account  in  five  books 
from  the  time  that  the  city  of  Rome  was  built  to  the 
capture  of  it,  first  treating  what  happened  under  the  kings, 
then  under  their  consuls,  dictators,  decemvirs,  and  consular 
tribunes,  what  wars  they  had  abroad  and  what  seditions  at 
home,  —  all  of  which  are  matters  of  obscurity,  not  only  be- 
cause of  their  great  antiquity,  which  renders  them  hardly  to 
be  seen  when  we  look  back,  as  it  were,  through  great  vistas  of 
space,  but  also  because  writings,  the  only  faithful  records  of 
events,  were  in  those  days  few  and  rare,  and  because  even 
the  descriptions  that  may  have  existed  in  the  commentaries 
of  the  pontiffs  or  in  other  public  and  private  records  were 
destroyed  when  the  city  was  burned.'  And  again,  in  the 
seventh  book,  after  relating  two  contradictory  versions  of  a 


jg  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

legend,  he  says :  '  I  should  not  fail  to  follow  it  up,  if  there 
were  any  true  way  of  investigating  the  truth  of  this  matter.' 
And  this  attitude  of  scepticism  is  not  confined  to  the  ear- 
liest books  :  we  find  it  cropping  out  again  and  again,  even 
so  late  as  in  the  thirty-eighth  book,  dealing  with  the  year 
187  B.C.  We  see,  therefore,  that  Livy  was  far  from 
being  the  uncritical  and  unintelligent  thinker  that  modern 
writers  have  so  often  called  him  : J  he  had  the  sense  to  see, 
what  many  moderns  have  not  had  the  sense  to  see,  that  it 
would  have  been  futile  for  him  to  attempt  to  restore  the 
lost  facts,  and  he  was  too  honest  to  pretend  to  be  able  to  do 
so.  Furthermore,  we  must  always  remember  that  we 
have  only  portions  of  Livy's  work,  or  rather  only  some  of  the 
earlier  forty-five  books.  These  carry  us  down  to  167  B.C. 
and  cover  the  period  of  five  hundred  and  eighty-six  years. 
But  there  were  nearly  one  hundred  more  books  when  the 
work  was  complete.  And  of  these  hundred,  thirty-four 
dealt  with  a  period  of  only  forty-two  years,  from  5  3  to  9 
B.C.  It  is  therefore  obvious  that  as  Livy  began  to  reach 
times  of  which  he  could  write  with  some  hope  of  reporting 
actual  facts,  his  work  grew  vastly  more  detailed,  and  this, 
coupled  with  the  scepticism  which  led  him  to  treat  early 
events  in  the  more  sketchy  and  general  manner  in  which 
he  does  treat  them,  shows  that  if  the  later  books  were 
extant,  we  should  have  in  them  a  trustworthy  source  of 
knowledge  for  the  later  period. 

But  enough  of  Livy  for  the  present.     I  have  shown, 

1  See  Professor  A.  A.  Howard's  learned  and  convincing  remarks,  written 
since  this  lecture  was  delivered,  on  the  unscientific  manner  in  which  modern 
critics  have  charged  Livy  with  dependence  upon  Valerius  Antias :  Harvard 
Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  1906,  xvii,  i6lff. 


THE   STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  17 

I  hope,  by  this  example  that  we  must  learn  to  know  the 
ancient  writers  by  living  with  them,  not  by  getting  our 
knowledge  of  them  from  lectures  or  from  histories  of  litera- 
ture. It  is  only  through  constant  association  with  a  writer 
that  one  can  get  a  true  conception  of  what  his  work  is  as 
a  human  document ;  only  this  enables  one  to  utter  such 
final  verdicts  as,  for  instance,  that  of  Tennyson  on  Pindar, 
when  he  says  :  '  Pindar  is  a  kind  of  Australian  poet ;  that 
is,  he  has  long  tracts  of  gravel  with  immensely  large  nug- 
gets of  gold  imbedded  therein.'  Or  again,  when  of  Virgil 
he  says :  '  People  accuse  Virgil  of  plagiarizing,  but  if  a 
man  made  it  his  own,  there  was  no  harm  in  that.  Look 
at  the  other  great  poets,  Shakspere  included.'  Here  we 
have  an  extremely  pithy  and  acute  remark  by  one  who 
had,  I  suppose,  a  truer  appreciation  of  the  greatness  of 
Virgil  as  a  poet  than  anybody  who  has  ever  lived  since 
Dante.  It  really  says  in  two  dozen  words,  if  you  know 
how  to  interpret  them,  all  that  is  to  be  found  in  the  two 
dozen  pages  devoted  to  this  point  by  a  recent  writer  of 
Studies  in  Virgil}-  The  fact  is,  as  Mr.  Glover  puts  it,  that 
we  are  not  much  helped  to  a  real  judgment  on  Virgil  by 
the  information  that  he  took  certain  words  or  verses  or 
episodes  from  this  or  that  earlier  poet.  Rather  should  we 
ask  ourselves :  how  far  did  this  or  that  earlier  poet  influ- 
ence the  mindoi  Virgil  ?  More,  for  instance,  than  North's 
Plutarch  influenced  the  mind  of  Shakspere?  Was  the 
poet's  outlook  on  life  affected  ?  Was  his  habitual  mode 
of  expressing  himself  turned  into  nothing  but  repetition  of 
the  thought  and  the  language  of  others  ?  When  such  is 

1  By  T.  R.  Glover.     From  the  second  chapter  of  this  excellent  book  I  have 
drawn  several  of  the  following  thoughts. 


lg  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

the  issue  of  literary  influence,  we  can  see  what  Carlyle 
meant  when  he  spoke  of  imitation  as  the  deadliest  of  poet- 
ical sins.  But  when  this  is  not  the  issue,  as  Mr.  Glover 
shows  that  it  was  not  in  the  case  of  Virgil,  then  we  realize 
the  truth  of  Goethe's  dictum  that  '  to  make  an  epoch  in 
the  world  two  conditions  are  essential,  —  a  good  head  and  a 
good  inheritance.'  It  was  because  Virgil  had  associated  so 
intimately  and  so  long  with  the  greatest  minds  of  the  past 
that  he  was  able  to  assimilate  what  was  best  in  their  minds 
with  the  original  genius  of  his  own,  and  so  to  produce  a 
poem  which,  more  than  all  the  rest  of  Latin  literature,  has 
influenced  the  succeeding  literature  which  is  our  inherit- 
ance. And  it  is  ours  to  use.  Therefore,  do  not  neglect 
to  use  it. 

But  our  field  of  classical  philology  is  an  extremely  wide 
one,  and  there  are  many  other  things  to  be  done  in  it  be- 
sides the  reading  of  the  authors.  Although  I  have  uttered 
a  warning  against  the  idea  that  much  in  the  way  of  real 
research  can  be  done  by  a  student  while  at  the  university, 
still  a  student  may  well  begin,  as  we  say  in  our  department 
pamphlet,  even  in  his  Junior  or  Senior  year,  '  to  devote  a 
portion  of  his  time  to  the  study  of  some  topic  which  re- 
quires independent  reading  and  the  collection  and  compar- 
ison of  evidence  from  various  sources.'  To  this  purpose 
he  may  make  his  cursory  kind  of  reading  subsidiary.  He 
may  be  on  the  watch,  as  he  reads,  for  light  which  may  be 
got  on  some  subject  or  subjects  in  which  he  has  become 
particularly  interested.  Notes  upon  this  may  be  jotted 
down  on  the  fly  leaves  of  the  book,  or  he  may  set  up  a 
notebook  or  a  series  of  small  notebooks  in  which  to  enter 
such  hints  as  he  comes  upon  them.  But  beware  of  getting 


THE  STUDENT  OF    THE  CLASSICS  19 

so  carried  away  by  a  subject  as  to  feel  that  it  is  the  all-im- 
portant thing,  or  to  see  it  where  it  does  not  belong.  The 
late  Professor  Lane  used  to  tell  a  story  about  a  young 
American  who  went  to  a  German  university  years  ago, 
bearing  a  letter  of  introduction  to  a  then  famous  scholar. 
He  presented  it,  and  after  the  first  words  of  welcome,  the 
great  man  asked,  'And  now,  my  young  friend,  what  are 
your  opinions  on  the  theories  and  the  text  of  the  Scriptores 
Gromatici  ? '  Needless  to  say  that  the  youth  had  never 
heard  of  these  obscure  writers,  with  whom  the  learned 
professor  passed  most  of  his  days  and  nights.  And  you 
may  also  take  warning  from  the  case  of  Mr.  Dick  in 
David  Copperfield.  You  recollect  that  he  had  a  fixed  idea 
that  in  some  mysterious  way  the  head  of  King  Charles  the 
First  was  mixed  up  with  his  own  fate,  and  that  conse- 
quently King  Charles's  head  always  would  make  its  appear- 
ance in  everything  he  tried  to  write.  Something  of  the 
sort  seems  to  have  happened  to  a  certain  living  English 
writer ;  the  Orphic  mysteries  are  the  King  Charles's  head 
in  this  case,  and  they  are  constantly  cropping  out  in  places 
where  they  have  no  business  to  be.  To  come  closer  home, 
I  am  myself  at  present  accused  of  seeing  the  hand  of  the 
Roman  architect  Vitruvius  as  a  sort  of  sign  pointing  the 
way  to  all  that  I  do  or  say.  I  shall  refute  this  slander  by 
saying  nothing  on  the  present  occasion  about  him,  although, 
as  Cicero  remarked  about  the  ichneumon :  '  possum  de 
Vitruvi  utilitate  multa  dicere,  sed  nolo  esse  longus.' 

But  what  are  some  of  the  topics  to  which  a  student  may 
begin  to  devote  some  special  study  even  during  his  under- 
graduate days,  or  which  he  may  take  up  as  a  graduate  stu- 
dent and  perhaps  develop  into  a  dissertation  for  the  doctor- 


2O  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

ate  ?  It  is  hard  to  give  general  advice,  for  men's  tastes  differ 
so  much,  and  so  do  their  capacities  for  different  kinds  of 
work ;  but  let  us  look  at  some  of  the  divisions  in  our  field  of 
classical  philology.  Well,  then,  there  are  private  antiquities, 
that  is,  studies  in  subjects  relating  to  the  everyday  life  of 
the  Greeks  and  Romans  ;  for  instance,  the  kinds  of  shoes1 
worn  by  the  Greeks,  or  the  varieties  of  vehicles  used  by  the 
Romans.  These  are  topics  which  would  call  for  the  study 
both  of  literary  and  material  monuments ;  or,  of  an  entirely 
different  kind  and  calling  for  the  use  of  the  literature  only, 
such  a  topic  as  the  mothers  of  eminent  Greeks  or  Romans. 
What  sort  of  persons  were  these  mothers  ?  What  influ- 
ence had  they  on  their  sons  ?  We  have  all  read  of  the  mother 
of  Euripides ;  something  we  all  know  about  the  mother  of 
Demosthenes.  Cornelia  counting  her  j  ewels  is  a  classic ;  the 
Empress  Livia  is  another.  Horace  does  not  mention  his 
mother;  she  is  a  mystery;  perhaps  there  was  a  romance  in 
her  match  ;  for  it  seems  impossible  that  Horace  should  have 
inherited  much  except  common  sense  fron:  that  hard- 
headed  old  person,  his  father,  the  freedman.  Cicero  does 
not  mention  his  mother,  but  his  brother  Quintus  refers  to  her 
in  a  passage  which  throws  light  upon  her  carefulness  as  a 
housekeeper.  And  we  know  that  the  two  brothers  were 
rather  finicky  creatures  about  their  country  houses.  Then 
another  subject  in  private  life,  a  little  one,  is  the  question 
whether  the  ancients  had  barrels  with  staves  and  hoops. 
This  has  been  both  affirmed  and  denied,  but  never  thor- 
oughly investigated. 

Turn  to  another  field :  ancient  religion.     Here  a  large 

1  Dr.  Bryant's  article  in  the   Harvard  Studies,   1899,  x,  is   confined   to 
the  classical  period. 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  21 

subject  awaiting  attention  is  the  Roman  festival  of  the  Satur- 
nalia, its  ceremonies,  their  origins,  and  particularly  their 
survivals.  On  the  Greek  side  it  would  be  a  grateful  task  if 
somebody  would  collect  everything  that  is  to  be  found  about 
the  Orphic  mysteries,  and  then  publish  it  without  a  single 
change  or  comment  of  his  own,  so  that  we  could  for  once 
see  what  has  been  transmitted  by  the  ancients  themselves  on 
this  difficult  theme,  without  any  modern  scholar's  attempts 
to  explain  or  to  alter  it.  Again,  a  shorter  investigation 
might  be  on  the  Roman  religious  feeling,  or  superstition  if 
you  prefer  to  say  so,  about  lightning.  Old  man  Cato 
remarks,  '  If  your  villa  be  struck  by  lightning,  let  there  be 
utterances  about  the  case.'1  What  sort  of  utterances? 
If  a  piece  of  ground  that  was  struck  by  lightning  had  to 
be  walled  off  and  set  apart  from  profane  use,  what  about 
a  human  being  who  was  struck  and  survived,  like  Anchises 
and  Augustus  ?  This  question,  if  we  may  trust  the  elder 
Pliny,  would  not  arise  in  the  case  of  other  animals ;  for  a 
dumb  animal  is  always  killed,  while  the  human  being  alone 
among  animals  can  survive  a  stroke  of  lightning. 

But  to  pass  to  another  field :  take  political  history. 
Here  are,  for  instance,  studies  to  be  made  in  the  his- 
tory of  specially  prominent  families;  one,  the  Claudian, 
has  already  been  treated  by  a  Harvard  doctor.2  No  doubt 
Professor  Howard  has  still  some  questions  about  the  Roman 
senate  that  need  attention.  In  legal  antiquities  a  good 
deal  remains  to  be  done ;  for  instance,  in  the  domain  of 
Greek  testamentary  law  and  the  rights  of  inheritance,  as 

1 R.  £.,  14,  3. 

2  G.  C  Fiske,  'The  Politics  of  the  Patrician  Claudii,'  Harvard  Studies,  1902, 
xiii. 


22  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

every  student  of  Isaeus  knows.  In  military  antiquities  it 
has  lately  been  suggested  that  we  need  a  study  of  the  de- 
velopment and  changes  in  Roman  tactics,  while  Professor 
Gummere  has  pointed  out  in  his  Beginnings  of  Poetry  that 
some  one  ought  to  investigate  the  nature  of  the  Greek 
Pyrrhic  and  other  war  dances. 

The  subject  of  grammar  is  always  clamoring  for  attention, 
and  here  I  think  that  a  beginning  ought  to  be  made  toward 
the  production  of  a  work  on  the  grammar  of  Latin  inscrip- 
tions, similar  to  that  of  Meisterhans  for  Greek,  — a  thesaurus 
giving  the  facts  without  anybody's  theories.  A  little  topic, 
but  a  troublesome  one,  in  Greek  grammar  might  be  an  in- 
quiry into  the  usage,  as  found  in  inscriptions  and  manu- 
scripts (not  in  the  emended  texts  which  we  use)  of  the  words 
Trot,  TTOV,  oTrot,  oTTOu,  and  the  like,  with  a  view  to  determine, 
if  possible,  whether  the  distinctions  laid  down  by  gramma- 
rians in  regard  to  these  words  are  borne  out  by  usage. 
Emended  texts  are  constantly  giving  us  great  trouble,  and 
perhaps  in  no  field  such  great  trouble  as  in  the  field  of 
metrical  studies,  which  are  now  beginning  to  receive  fresh 
attention  along  new  lines.  Our  printed  texts,  particularly 
those  of  Greek  plays,  so  swarm  with  emendations  which 
have  been  perpetrated  to  make  the  metre  conform  to 
modern  ideas,  that  it  is  really  very  difficult  to  test  the  value 
of  the  new  theories  from  our  printed  books.  The  late  Dr. 
Hayley  often  said  that  it  would  be  a  great  boon  if  somebody 
would  give  us  a  printed  edition  of  all  the  Greek  choruses 
without  admitting  a  single  emendation  made  for  the  sake 
of  the  metre,  so  that  we  could  take  a  fresh  start  from  the 
manuscript  tradition. 

Finally,  there  are  many  topics  in  the  history  of  Greek 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  23 

and  Roman  literature  in  which  good  work  can  be  done  by 
young  scholars.  These  must  be  constantly  cropping  up 
in  all  the  advanced  courses  which  you  are  taking,  and  not 
merely  in  the  formal  courses  on  that  history.  Note  down 
such  topics  as  they  are  mentioned,  and  consider  whether 
you  are  attracted  to  the  study  of  some  one  of  them. 
Then  new  fragments  of  the  old  writers,  which  call  for 
careful  study,  are  not  infrequently  discovered,  especially 
in  recent  years  at  Oxyrhynchus,  where  the  rubbish  heaps 
have  yielded  so  many  interesting  papyri.  Perhaps  I  can- 
not better  close  these  remarks  of  mine  than  by  telling  you 
something  about  the  contents  of  two  of  these  which  have 
interested  me.  They  are  the  certificate  of  the  offering  of 
a  pagan  sacrifice  and  the  argument  of  a  lost  play  by  the 
comic  poet  Cratinus.  Both  are  to  be  found  in  the  fourth 
volume  of  the  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri,  published  last  sum- 
mer. What  I  shall  say  is  not  .he  result  of  much  'orig- 
inal research '  on  my  part,  but  only  a  report  for  your 
information. 

You  all  know  the  letter  written  by  Pliny  to  the  Em- 
peror Trajan,  in  which  he  describes  the  trials  of  persons 
accused  of  being  Christians,  and  you  recollect  that  he 
obliged  persons  who  wished  to  prove  that  they  were  not 
Christians,  to  perform  acts  of  worship  before  the  pagan 
divinities.  This  kind  of  test  was  continued  in  later  times, 
and  a  person  who  had  passed  the  test  found  it  convenient 
to  be  provided  with  evidence  that  he  had  passed  it,  so  as 
not  to  have  to  submit  to  it  again.  This  would  be  particu- 
larly convenient  at  times  of  organized  persecutions  of  the 
Christians.  The  evidence  took  the  form  of  a  certificate, 
signed  and  sealed  by  magistrates,  which  a  man  could 


24  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

carry  about  with  him  and  exhibit  in  case  he  were  accused 
of  being  a  Christian.  We  already  knew  something  about 
such  certificates  from  a  passage  in  the  Christian  writer 
Cyprianus  (Ep.  55)  of  the  third  century,  from  which  it 
appears  that  real  Christians  sometimes  bribed  magistrates 
to  give  bogus  certificates,  and  thus  protected  themselves 
without  actually  passing  the  test  of  a  pagan  sacrifice. 
But  the  actual  form  of  the  certificate  was  not  known  until 
discoveries  of  papyri  began  to  be  made  in  Egypt.  About 
ten  years  ago,  fragments  of  two  certificates  were  found  in 
the  Fayum,1  and  now  a  third  has  appeared  at  Oxyrhyn- 
chus.  All  these  resemble  each  other,  showing  that  they 
were  prepared  according  to  a  set  formula.  This  one  from 
Oxyrhynchus  is  of  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Decius,  whose 
persecution  of  the  Christians,  in  250  A.D.,  was  one  of  the 
most  rigorous.  It  is  written  in  Greek,  and  may  be  trans- 
lated as  follows :  — 

'  To  those  in  charge  of  the  offerings  and  sacrifices  at  the 
city,  from  Aurelius,  son  of  Theodorus  and  Pantonymis,  of 
the  aforesaid  city.  I  have  always  continued  to  sacrifice 
and  pour  libations  to  the  gods,  and  now  also  I  have  in 
your  presence,  in  accordance  with  the  ordinance,  poured 
libations  and  sacrificed  and  tasted  the  offerings,  together 
with  my  son  Aurelius  Dioscorus  and  my  daughter  Aurelia 
Lais.  I  therefore  request  you  to  subscribe  to  this.  In 
the  first  year  of  Emperor  Caesar  Gaius  Messius  Quintus 
Trajanus  Decius  Pius  Felix  Augustus,  the  2Oth  of  the 
month  Payni.' 

Here  the  fragment  ends,  only  a  letter  or  two  remain- 
ing of  the  part  where  the  magistrates  probably  subscribed. 

1  Harnack,  Theol.  Literature,  1894,  38  and  162. 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  2$ 

Pliny  specifically  mentions  two  points  in  the  test  which 
are  not  noted  in  this  document,  —  that  he  required  the 
suspected  Christians  to  worship  not  only  the  pagan  gods 
in  general,  but  also  the  image  of  the  emperor,  and  that  he 
required  them  to  blaspheme  the  name  of  our  Lord.  The 
former  of  these  acts  may  indeed  be  covered  in  our  cer- 
tificate by  the  words  '  the  gods.'  The  certificate  otherwise 
conforms  to  what  we  should  expect  from  Pliny's  require- 
ments, and  it  would  be  a  useful  part  of  a  commentary  on 
that  author. 

The  other  papyrus  fragment  is  far  more  interesting  and 
valuable.  I  mean  the  argument  to  a  lost  comedy  of  Crati- 
nus.  In  our  histories  of  Greek  literature,  this  poet  stands 
chronologically  fourth  in  the  list  of  Athenian  writers  of 
comedy.  Only  about  twenty  verses  have  survived  to  us 
from  all  the  plays  of  his  three  predecessors,  and  nothing 
but  vague  guesses  can  be  made  about  the  plots  of  their 
plays.  But  when  we  reach  Cratinus,  we  find  many  more 
fragments  surviving;  nearly  four  hundred  verses  are 
printed  in  Kock's  collection  of  the  comic  fragments,  and 
we  know  the  names  of  more  than  a  score  of  his  plays. 
From  the  fragments  and  from  what  other  ancient  writers 
tell  us  about  him,  we  can  form  a  fair  idea  of  his  style,  of 
his  conception  of  comedy,  and  of  his  literary  character ; 
but  when  we  try  to  discover  the  actual  plots  of  his  plays, 
we  are  very  much  at  a  loss  and  have  to  resort  to  all  sorts 
of  conjectures,  so  that  two  scholars  rarely  reach  the  same 
conclusion  about  them.  To  be  sure,  we  learn  something 
about  his  Pytine  or  Flask  from  a  scholion  to  the  Knights 
of  Aristophanes,  but  it  is  only  how  in  this  play  he 
dealt  with  certain  literary  questions  touching  his  own  atti- 


26  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

tude  toward  comedy,  and  it  really  helps  us  hardly  at  all 
towards  the  details  of  the  plot.  Fancy,  therefore,  the  de- 
light of  scholars  when  they  learned  that  an  argument  to 
one  of  his  plays  had  been  found  at  Oxyrhynchus !  This 
play  turns  out  to  be  the  Dionysalexandros,  or  Dionysus 
Alexander.  A  dozen  short  fragments  of  the  play  itself 
have  long  been  known,  but  they  threw  no  light  at  all  upon 
the  plot,  so  that  previous  to  this  discovery  there  was  noth- 
ing upon  which  to  base  conjectures  about  it,  except  the 
title  of  the  play.  This  title  led  Meineke  to  state,  though 
with  much  hesitation,  that  the  comedy  dealt  with  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  and  he  believed  that  it  was  written  by  a 
younger  Cratinus,  not  by  the  early  poet.  So  also  had 
Casaubon  guessed,  two  hundred  years  before.  Kock, 
however,  conjectured  that  by  Alexandros  was  meant  Paris, 
the  Trojan  hero,  and  he  assigned  the  play  to  the  great 
Cratinus,  pointing  to  other  mythological  characters  ap- 
pearing in  the  titles  of  his  plays,  such  as  Odysseus,  Neme- 
sis, and  Tryphonius.  This  conjecture  was  not  original 
with  Kock,  for  it  had  been  put  forth  in  a  forgotten  article 
by  one  Grauert,1  though  Kock  seems  not  to  have  known  the 
fact.  The  question  is  now  settled  in  favor  of  Grauert's  idea 
by  the  Oxyrhynchus  argument,  which  I  shall  proceed  to 
describe  —  merely  mentioning  in  passing  that  the  literature 
of  this  new  subject  is  still  very  small.  I  know  of  only  three 
articles  besides  the  original  publication ;  one  by  Maurice 
Croiset  in  the  Revue  des  Etudes  Grecques  (1904,  xvii, 
297  ff.),  one  by  Korte  in  the  Hermes  (1904,  xxxix, 
481  ff.),  and  the  third,  in  the  form  of  a  brief  note,  by 

1  Rhein.  Mus.,  1828,  ii,  62. 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  2/ 

Rutherford  in  the  Classical  Review  (1904,  xviii,  44O).1 
From  them  I  have  drawn  much  of  what  follows  here. 

The  new  argument  seems  to  have  consisted  originally  of 
three  columns  of  writing.  The  Oxyrhynchus  papyrus  in- 
cludes the  whole  of  the  third  and  most  of  the  second,  but 
the  first  is  lost.  Fortunately,  however,  the  title  of  the  play 
and  the  name  of  the  author  are  written  at  the  top  of  the 
third  column.  Our  argument  shows  that  the  chorus  in  the 
play  consisted  of  satyrs,  and  that  the  plot  was  a  perversion 
or  burlesque  of  the  story  of  the  rape  of  Helen  in  which 
Dionysus  took  the  place  of  Paris ;  hence  the  title.  The 
papyrus  begins  with  a  few  mutilated  words  from  which  we 
can  gather  only  that  there  was  probably  a  search  for  some- 
body, and  that  Hermes  did  something — perhaps  left  the 
scene.  Then  the  rest  of  the  argument  is  perfectly  intelli- 
gible, and  runs  thus  :  — 

'  And  these,  turning  to  the  spectators '  (TT/JO?  roy?  flearcfe, 
a  regular  phrase  used  of  the  parabasis,  so  that  the  writer 
of  the  argument  is  evidently  now  describing  this  part  of 
the  play  ;  '  these '  are  therefore  the  chorus  of  satyrs)  '  talk 
about  the  getting  of  sons  '  (what  this  means  we  shall  later 
see)  'and  on  the  appearance  of  Dionysus  they  mock  at 
him  and  scoff  at  him.  But  he,  being  offered  by  Hera  a 
sovereignty  not  to  be  shaken,  by  Athene  good  fortune  in 
war,  and  by  Aphrodite  the  prospect  of  becoming  most  beau- 
tiful and  much  beloved,  adjudges  the  victory  to  this  last.' 

1I  had  not  seen  Wilamowitz's  discussion  (Gott.  G.  A.,  1904,  clxvi,  665) 
when  I  thus  spoke,  but  I  have  now  added  something  from  it  on  p.  31. 
Since  this  lecture  was  delivered,  Blass,  Perdrizet,  and  Thieme  (Quaest.  Com. 
ad  Periclem  pertinentia  cap.  tria,  Diss.,  Leipz.,  1908,  where  a  bibliography  is 
given)  have  written  on  this  subject,  without  adding  much  that  is  new  to  the 
part  of  it  which  I  have  here  discussed. 


28  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

Here  we  see  that  in  this  play  Dionysus  was  the  judge  in 
what  is  commonly  called  the  'judgment  of  Paris.'  The 
judgment  took  place  on  Mt.  Ida,  as  the  next  sentence  of 
the  argument  will  show.  The  chorus  of  satyrs  were  wit- 
nesses of  it,  and  no  doubt  a  good  deal  of  fun,  sometimes 
licentious,  was  made.  The  offer  of  Aphrodite  to  make 
Dionysus  irresistible,  is  different  from  the  usual  story  in 
which  she  offers  the  fairest  of  women  to  Paris.  We  can- 
not tell  exactly  how  it  came  about  that  Dionysus,  and  not 
Paris,  acted  as  the  judge.  This  was  no  doubt  made  clear  in 
the  missing  first  column  of  the  argument,  and  in  the  play 
it  may  have  been  worked  out  in  a  comic  vein.  Perhaps 
when  the  goddesses  arrived,  Paris  turned  out  to  be  too  wise 1 
a  man  to  undertake  the  invidious  job  of  deciding  among 
them,  and  perhaps  then  it  was  somehow  learned  that 
Dionysus  was  in  the  neighborhood.  At  the  beginning  of 
our  fragment  is  what  seems  to  be  a  mutilated  part  of  the 
verb  fared),  'to  search  after.'  Perhaps  Hermes  went  in 
search  of  him  or  of  Paris,  and,  not  finding  Paris,  took 
Dionysus,  or  perhaps  Dionysus  pretended  to  be  Paris. 
However,  the  argument  proceeds  as  follows :  '  After  this, 
Dionysus  sailed  to  Lacedaemon,  carried  off  Helen,  and  comes 
back  again  to  Ida.'  This  does  not  necessarily  mean  that 
the  scene  changed.  It  is  more  probable  that  he  went  off, 
and  that  then  the  chorus  sang  an  ode ;  or  perhaps  some 
dialogue  took  place,  as  in  the  Acharnians  when  Amphi- 
theus  goes  to  Sparta  and  returns  between  verses  133  and 
175.  The  return  of  Dionysus  with  his  prize,  the  beautiful 

1  In  the  play,  of  course  I  mean,  not  in  the  real  myth,  where  his  reluctance 
is  naturally  explainable  by  man's  terror  at  seeing  a  divinity  face  to  face;  cf. 
Perdrizet,  Rev.  des  £tudes  Grecques,  1905,  vii,  112  f. 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  29 

Helen,  would  afford  an  opportunity  for  a  personal  exhibition 
of  her  charms,  with,  no  doubt,  a  good  deal  of  comment  upon 
them,  not  altogether  too  modest,  —  such,  in  fact,  as  we  find 
in  the  Peace  between  Trygaeus  and  his  ladies.  Our  argu- 
ment goes  on  :  '  But  soon  afterwards,  having  learned  that 
the  Achaeans  were  wasting  the  country  with  fire,  he  takes 
refuge  with  Alexander,  and,  having  hidden  Helen  in  a 
basket  as  if  she  were  a  .  .  .'  (here  a  word  is  missing  at  the 
end  of  a  line.  The  editors  of  the  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri 
suggest  rvpdv,  cheese;  the  word  for  basket  in  the  argu- 
ment is  TaXa/>o?,  and  we  know  that  cheese  was  sometimes 
kept  in  a  raXa/ao?,  for  instance  from  the  Frogs  of  Aristoph- 
anes. With  greater  probability  Korte  suggests  opviv,  bird, 
as  raXa/jo?  seems  to  mean  bird  cage  in  a  passage  in  Athen- 
aeus,  or  xnvat  goose,  remembering  Helen's  birth  from  an 
egg.  But  whatever  Dionysus  pretended  that  Helen  was, 
the  argument  proceeds  :)  '  and  having  disguised  himself  as 
a  ram,  he  awaits  the  issue.'  To  this  scene  must  belong,  I 
think,  although  Croiset  does  not,  a  line  preserved  by 
several  ancient  writers,  and  by  them  expressly  attributed  to 
this  play:  — 

6  8'  ^Aiflios  tocnrep  irpoftarov  fir)  J3f)  Xey<ov  /fa8t£ci 
'  The  silly  fellow  walks,  saying  baa  baa  like  a  sheep.' 

What  fun  there  must  have  been  in  this  scene.  This 
Dionysus  is  the  very  twin  brother  of  the  Dionysus  of  the 
first  part  of  the  Frogs — a  perfect  buffoon.  I  may  also 
remark,  apropos  of  this  verse,  that  our  argument  teaches 
us  once  more  how  very  dangerous  it  is  to  try  to  emend 
fragments  and  to  bend  them  to  suit  one's  theories.  It 
is  only  ten  years  ago  that  a  learned  man,  proposing  an 
emendation  of  this  verse  in  a  well-known  learned  journal, 


3Q  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

wrote  these  words  :  '  It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  a  person, 
however  foolish  or  silly,  could  walk  about  saying  baa  baa' 
The  argument  goes  on :  '  But  Alexander  appears  and 
detects  them  both,  and  gives  orders  to  take  them  to  the 
ships,  with  the  intention  of  handing  them  over  to  the 
Achaeans.  But  Helen  shrinks  from  this,  and  so  he  took  pity 
on  her  and  keeps  her  to  be  his  wife,  but  sends  off  Dionysus 
to  be  handed  over.  The  satyrs  accompany  Dionysus, 
encouraging  him  and  saying  that  they  would  never 
desert  him.'  Could  there  be  a  better  travesty  of  mythol- 
ogy than  this?  Paris  kindly  consenting,  out  of  pity,  to 
marry  the  most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world,  after  she 
has  been  boxed  up  in  a  cage  or  shut  in  a  basket,  and  poor 
Dionysus  led  off  —  perhaps  still  disguised  as  a  ram  —  to 
be  handed  over  to  punishment.  Truly  a  good  take-off  on 
the  'sorrows  of  Dionysus,'  as  we  hear  of  them  in  early 
tragedy. 

But  this  is  not  the  end  of  our  argument.  There 
remains  one  more  sentence  which  contains  a  great  sur- 
prise. So  far,  the  comedy  has  appeared  to  be  nothing  but 
pure  burlesque,  and  it  reminds  one  very  much  of  our  own 
invertebrate  comic  operas.  But  now  comes  the  following 
sentence,  with  which  the  argument  ends  :  '  In  this  drama 
Pericles  is  satirized  («ft>/ia>8emu)  very  plausibly  by  innu- 
endo for  having  brought  the  war  upon  the  Athenians.' 
Here  is  an  astonishing  statement;  for  who  would  ever 
have  imagined,  from  the  rest  of  the  argument  and  far  less 
from  the  fragments  of  the  play  itself,  that  there  was  any 
political  satire  in  this  comedy.  But  now  we  suddenly  learn 
that  here,  as  in  his  Thrattae  and  in  his  Chirones,  Cratinus 
attacked  the  leader  of  the  party  to  which  his  own  political 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  31 

chief,  Cimon,  had  been  opposed.  And  we  learn  also  that  the 
comedy  was  brought  out  after  the  Peloponnesian  War  had 
begun.  How,  then,  was  the  satire  managed  ?  Croiset  sug- 
gests an  answer  to  this  question  upon  the  following  lines :  — 
The  words  of  the  argument,  '  having  heard  that  the 
Achaeans  were  laying  waste  the  country,'  suggest  the  first 
invasion  of  Attica  by  the  Spartans  in  the  summer  of  431,  as 
described  by  Thucydides  (2,19).  In  the  comedy  a  messenger 
perhaps  related  to  Dionysus  the  coming  of  the  Achaeans, 
and  his  description  of  what  they  were  doing  would  recall  to 
the  audience  what  had  happened  when  the  Spartans  came. 
The  invasion  in  the  comedy  was  due  to  the  carrying  off  of 
Helen  by  Dionysus.  What  Athenian  gossip  said  about 
the  libertine  behavior  of  Pericles  as  a  cause  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesian War,  is  well  known  to  us  from  Plutarch  (Per.  1 3 
and  32)  and  Aristophanes  (Ach.  527).  Dionysus  acts  like 
a  coward  in  the  comedy  when  he  hears  of  the  approach  of 
the  Achaeans,  and  Pericles  was  charged  by  his  enemies  with 
cowardice  in  431  and  430  (Thuc.  2,  21;  Plut.  Per.  33). 
Then  again  it  has  been  pointed  out  by  Wilamowitz  that 
the  handing  over  of  Dionysus  in  the  comedy  to  the 
Achaeans  is  an  allusion  to  the  demand  of  the  Spartans  that 
Pericles  as  one  of  the  accused  descendants  of  Cylon  should 
be  driven  out  of  Athens  (Thuc.  I,  126  f.).  Finally,  if  you 
accept,  as  I  have  done,  Rutherford's  brilliant  explanation 
of  the  reading  at  the  beginning  of  our  argument,  where 
the  chorus  '  talks  about  the  getting  of  sons,'  you  have 
perhaps  an  allusion  to  the  project  for  admitting  the 
younger  Pericles  (the  son  of  Pericles  by  Aspasia)  to  full 
citizenship  in  Athens,  a  project  under  foot  in  430  B.C. 
And  from  all  this  satirizing  of  Pericles,  we  can  perhaps,  as 


32  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

Croiset  suggests,  arrive  at  the  date  of  the  performance  of 
the  comedy.  Plutarch  (Per.  33)  quotes  some  anapaests 
by  Hermippus,  the  contemporary  comic  poet,  directed 
against  Pericles,  which  thus  begin  :  — 

'  Oh,  king  of  the  satyrs,  why  refusest  thou 
To  raise  thy  spear,  —  and  yet 
Dost  utter  dreadful  words  about  the  war?' 

Accepting  the  conjecture  of  Kock  and  Meineke  that 
these  verses  come  from  Hermippus's  comedy  of  the  Moirae, 
and  conjecturing,  from  what  Plutarch  says,  that  they  were 
written  in  the  year  430,  Croiset  asks  :  '  But  why  is  Pericles 
called  king  of  the  satyrs  ?  Our  play  by  Cratinus  shows 
us.  He  had  lately  appeared  as  such  on  the  stage,  being 
the  Dionysus  of  Cratinus's  comedy.  We  may  therefore 
perhaps  conclude  that  the  Dionysalexandros  was  produced 
at  the  Lenaea  in  430  B.C.* 

If  this  conclusion  is  correct  (and  certainly  it  is  both 
probable  and  attractive),  then  this  work  of  Cratinus  is  the 
oldest  Greek  comedy  of  the  plot  of  which  we  have  any  de- 
tailed information.  The  oldest  extant  play  by  Aristoph- 
anes, the  Achamians,  was  produced,  as  you  know,  five 
years  later.  However  it  may  be  about  the  date,1  here  is 
one  thing  which  we  can  say  with  certainty :  this  is  the  only 
fifth  century  Athenian  comedy  on  a  mythological  subject 
of  the  details  of  which  we  really  know  anything  at  all. 
Finally,  the  discovery  of  this  argument  teaches  us  once 
again  how  dangerous  it  is  to  work  up  a  theory  of  the  con- 
tents of  a  lost  work  from  the  chance  fragments  of  it  that 
may  have  survived.  For  even  now  that  we  know  what  the 
play  is  about,  there  is  only  one  of  the  dozen  fragments  of 

1  Thieme,  p.  29,  prefers  the  year  429. 


THE  STUDENT  OF  THE  CLASSICS  33 

it  which  we  can  fit  into  the  plot  with  any  sort  of  certainty. 
How  much  more  untrustworthy,  then,  must  be  the  results 
in  the  cases  of  most  lost  plays,  of  the  plots  of  which  we 
know  nothing !  More  than  thirty  years  ago,  Leo  said : 
'  fieri  non  potest  ut  atticae  comoediae  ullius  argumentum  e 
fragmentis  refingatur.' 

I  recognize  that  these  remarks  of  mine  to-night  have 
been  somewhat  rambling ;  but  they  could  not  be  other  than 
rambling,  for  I  had  no  definite  idea  of  what  I  was  going 
to  write  when  I  began  this  address.  As  I  end  it,  how- 
ever, let  me  not  violate  a  principle  which  I  am  often  try- 
ing to  impress  upon  some  of  you  —  that  one  should  always 
summarize  one's  results  at  the  end  of  a  piece  of  work.  In 
these  remarks,  then,  I  have  intended  first  to  emphasize  the 
importance  of  private  study  without  dependence  upon  the 
immediate  presence  of  a  teacher,  and  I  have  mentioned 
some  of  the  lines  in  which  such  study  can  be  carried  on, 
and  how  it  can  be  carried  on.  Particularly  I  have  insisted 
upon  the  need  of  wide  reading  in  the  Greek  and  Latin 
authors  and  the  advantage  of  getting  upon  as  intimate 
terms  with  them  as  you  possibly  can.  While  warning  you 
against  the  dangers  of  too  early  specialization,  I  have  sug- 
gested examples  of  topics  upon  which  even  an  undergrad- 
uate may  well  begin  to  think  for  himself.  And  by  referring 
to  the  Oxyrhynchus  papyri,  I  have  indicated  that,  although 
some  people  have  a  notion  that  the  field  of  classical  study 
has  already  been  worked  out,  yet  this  field  is  constantly 
offering  something  new  to  those  who  know  where  to  look. 
Let  me,  therefore,  close  with  a  word  of  good  cheer  from 
Demosthenes  :  a^eBov  etprj^'  a  vo^i^a)  avfJLcfrepeiv  •  u/tet?  8' 
'  o  TI  Kal  ry  Trd\ei  Kal  ajracri  arvvoiaeiv  vfilv  [4€\\ei. 


THE   TEACHER   OF   THE   CLASSICS1 

ON  the  24th  of  May,  1660,  Mr.  Samuel  Pepys,  the  great 
English  annalist,  made  the  following  entry  in  his 
Diary :  — 

'  Up,  and  made  myself  as  fine  as  I  could,  with  the  lin- 
ning  stockings  on  and  wide  canons  that  I  bought  the 
other  day  at  Hague.' 

But  some  time  later  we  find  the  following  entry :  — 

'3 ist.  — To  church;  and  with  my  mourning  very  hand- 
some, and  new  periwigg,  make  a  great  show.' 

Is  there  a  tailor  among  us,  or  lover  of  fine  clothes,  who 
can  tell  us  whether  there  is  anything  much  more  animat- 
ing in  a  suit  of  mourning  and  a  periwig  than  in  a  pair  of 
imported  stockings  with  wide  canons  ?  If  not,  why  should 
Mr.  Pepys  have  used  the  present  tense  '  make '  in  his 
narrative  of  the  one,  but  the  past  tense  'made'  in  his 
narrative  of  the  other? 

Let  us  now  go  back  some  two  thousand  years  and  exam- 
ine the  familiar  opening  lines  of  Xenophon's  Anabasis :  — 

'  To  Darius  and  Parysatis  are  born  two  sons,  the  elder 
Artaxerxes,  and  the  younger  Cyrus.'  But  in  the  next 
sentence :  '  Now  when  Darius  lay  sick  and  suspected  that 
his  end  was  nigh,  he  wished  \tQ^.  his  sons  to  be  with  him.' 

Why  does  the  narrator  put  the  commonplace  registry  of 

1  An  address  before  the  New  York  Latin  Club,  November  12,  1902  ;  first 
published  in  The  Latin  Leaflet,  1903,  No.  61,  62,  64,  65. 

34 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  35 

birth  into  the  present  tense,  but  employ  the  past  to  de- 
scribe the  longing  of  a  dying  father  for  his  sons  ? 

Here  are  questions  in  seeking  answer  to  which  we  get 
but  cold  comfort  from  the  school  grammars,  Greek  or 
Latin,  which  we  teachers  have  been  so  faithfully  fum- 
bling these  many  years.  One  tells  us  that  the  present  is 
employed  'to  give  a  more  animated  statement  of  past 
events ' ;  another  that  it  is  used  '  as  a  lively  representa- 
tion of  the  past ' ;  a  third  informs  us  that  '  this  usage, 
common  in  all  language,  comes  from  imagining  past  events 
as  going  on  before  our  eyes.'  One  of  the  very  latest 
says :  '  In  vivid  narration  the  speaker  may  for  the  mo- 
ment feel  that  he  is  living  the  past  over  again  and  so  may 
use  the  present  tense  in  describing  events  already  past.' 
Then  follow  three  examples,  and  the  third  is  the  first  sen- 
tence in  the  Anabasis !  What  ?  Did  Xenophon  feel  that 
he  was  '  living  over  again '  the  days  when  Parysatis  was 
brought  to  bed  of  her  two  sons  ?  Is  Livy's  soul  enthralled 
by  the  vividness  of  past  events  when  he  gives  us  in  his 
third  chapter  that  long  line  of  reigns  and  genealogies  :  — 

'  Silvius  deinde  regnat;  is  Aeneam  Silvium  creat. 
Agrippa  inde  regnat.  Proca  deinde  regnat;  is  Numitorem 
procreat ;  Numitori  regnum  Silvae  gentis  legat? 

Not  one  whit  more,  I  warrant,  than  the  Evangelist 
when  he  wrote,  using  the  past  tense :  '  Abraham  begat 
Isaac ;  and  Isaac  begat  Jacob ;  and  Jacob  begat  Judas 
and  his  brethren.' 

But  I  am  sure  that  I  need  not  press  this  point  further, 
for  it  must  be  perfectly  obvious  to  you  that  the  present 
tense  in  the  sentences  which  I  have  quoted  from  Pepys, 
from  Xenophon,  and  from  Livy  is  not  accounted  for 


36  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

under  the  usual  treatment  of  the  Historical  Present  in 
our  schoolbooks.  The  term  itself  is  a  bad  one,  for  it 
does  not  suggest  the  vivid  narration  of  past  events  which 
it  undoubtedly  is  the  function  of  the  present  tense  some- 
times to  express;  and  the  explanations  are  defective  be- 
cause they  do  not  account  for  the  statement,  in  this  tense, 
of  dull,  inanimate,  historical  facts.  It  must  be  clear  that 
we  have  here  two  distinct  usages  which  ought  not  to  be 
confused  and  treated  under  the  same  head  in  a  single  sec- 
tion of  a  grammar.  There  is  nothing  very  new  in  what  I 
am  saying ;  and  I  fancy  that  the  distinction  which  should 
be  drawn  is  familiar  to  not  a  few  of  you.  If  I  repeat  it 
here,  it  is  because  new  school  grammars  and  editions  of 
the  authors  continue  to  ignore  it,  and  because  I  remember 
how  absurdly  inconsistent  the  section  on  the  historical 
present  and  the  examples  under  it  used  to  seem  to  me 
in  the  grammars  which  I  studied  when  I  was  a  schoolboy. 
The  distinction  was  drawn  by  Professor  Lane  in  his  Latin 
Grammar,  and  it  is  recognized  by  Professor  Gildersleeve 
in  his  invaluable  new  book  on  the  Syntax  of  Classical 
Greek.  Into  the  question  whether  the  two  kinds  of  pres- 
ents are  the  same  in  origin  or  not,  I  do  not  now  enter.  I 
am  talking  now  merely  of  usage  by  the  Greek  and  Latin 
authors  in  their  writings  as  we  have  them;  not  of  the 
origins  of  usage.  And  I  will  venture  here  to  pause  and 
to  interject  the  remark  that  I  am  strongly  of  opinion  that 
some  of  us  are  attaching  too  much  attention  to  'origins' 
in  a  good  many  departments  of  our  teaching.  The  first 
and  all-important  thing  is  that  our  pupils,  whether  in 
schools  or  in  colleges,  should  be  able  to  read  the  authors 
with  understanding  and  appreciation ;  and  it  will  in  gen- 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE   CLASSICS  37 

eral  be  found  that  this  twofold  task  —  and  particularly  the 
latter  part  of  it,  the  appreciation  of  the  authors  —  is  all 
that  a  schoolboy,  or  a  college  student,  until  he  gets  a  good 
deal  more  than  halfway  through  his  college  course,  can 
accomplish.  He  ought  to  be  taught  what  each  word  or 
phrase  meant  to  the  writer  who  penned  it ;  he  need  know 
nothing  about  the  semi-civilized  Indo-European  who  first 
mouthed  it  out,  or  something  like  it.  He  must  know  the 
manners  and  customs  of  the  time  about  which  he  is  study- 
ing, not  necessarily  their  evolution  up  from  prehistoric 
man.  It  matters  very  little  to  him  how  the  adjective 
nobilis  is  formed ;  whether  from  no-  and  -bills  or  from  a 
hypothetical  *nobus  a,nd~ais  ;  but  it  ought  to  be  impressed 
upon  him  that  the  word  doesn't  mean  noble  at  all;  just  as 
he  ought  to  know  that  when  people  called  Cicero  a  novus 
homo,  they  didn't  mean  that  he  was  a  bourgeois  or  of  a  low, 
mean  family.  And  so  with  our  present  tense ;  never  mind 
its  origin  till  much  later,  if  ever ;  but  let  us  make  sure  that 
our  students  see  what  it  indicates. 

There  is,  then,  in  the  usage  of  the  Greek  and  Latin 
authors  an  Annalistic  or  Notebook  present,  which  is  em- 
ployed in  brief  historical  or  personal  memoranda,  '  to  note 
incidents  day  by  day  or  year  by  year  as  they  occur.'  Of 
this  present  I  have  given  examples  already,  and  those  of 
you  who  keep  diaries  make  use  of  it  very  often.  And  there  is 
also  a  Present  of  Vivid  Narration,  a  rhetorical  device,  used 
consciously  to  represent  with  animation  a  past  action  as  if 
it  were  going  on  at  the  time  of  writing.  One  of  the  best 
examples  of  this  kind  of  present  is  to  be  found  in  the  first 
book  of  the  Aeneid  in  the  description  of  that  storm  which 
Aeolus  blows  up  at  the  request  of  Juno :  — 


38  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

1  When  this  was  said,  with  spear  reversed  he  smote  the 
mountain  on  its  side ;  and  instantly  the  winds,  as  it  were 
a  battle  line,  rush  forth  and  sweep  over  the  lands  in  a 
cyclone.  They've  settled  on  the  sea  (observe  the  perfect 
definite),  and  Eurus  and  Notus  side  by  side  upheave  it  all 
from  its  very  bottom  —  Af ricus,  too,  teeming  with  the 
hurricane  —  and  huge  are  the  waves  which  they  roll  to  the 
strand.  Then  ensues  the  cry  of  men  and  the  creaking  of 
cordage.  Clouds  of  a  sudden  pluck  away  the  daylight 
from  the  Teucrians'  eyes ;  dark  night  broods  upon  the 
sea.  The  heaven  hath  thundered  (perfect  definite  again) 
and  the  ether  flashes  with  fire  on  fire.' 

Wonderful  indeed  is  the  vivifying  effect  of  this  present 
when  it  is  rightly  used  and  in  moderation.  It  can  be  over- 
worked :  witness  those  English  novels  written  by  'The 
Duchess,'  a  great  favorite,  I  believe,  with  the  ladies, 
though,  of  course,  men  never  read  her.  I  am  told  that 
the  present  of  vivid  narration  is  the  only  tense  which  she 
employs.  But  we  must  beware  of  seeing  a  vivid  present 
where  it  is  not  really  found ;  and  this  brings  me  to  another 
passage  which  stands  a  little  earlier  in  the  same  book  of 
the  Aeneid. 

The  goddess  Juno,  you  remember,  utters  an  impassioned 
complaint  at  the  apparent  escape  of  the  Trojans  from  her 
vengeance,  and  then  :  — 

Talia  flammato  secum  dea  corde  volutans, 
Nimborum  in  patriam,  loco,  f eta  fur entibus  austris, 
Aeoliam  venit. 

1  To  Aeolia  doth  she  come.'  Here  indeed  in  venit  we 
do  have  an  example  of  the  present  of  vivid  narration.  But 
what  follows?  I  translate  thus:  'Here,  in  a  cavern  huge, 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  39 

King  Aeolus  subdues  unto  his  rule  the  struggling  winds 
and  sounding  tempests,  bridling  them  with  chains  and  in  a 
dungeon.  They  in  resentment  chafe  about  the  barriers 
while  the  mountain  mightily  resounds;  high  in  his  hold 
sits  Aeolus,  sceptre  in  hand,  and  calms  their  spirits  and 
abates  their  angry  passions.'  Now  it  is  not  uncommon  to 
hear  these  six  presents,  premit,  frenat,  fremunt,  sedet, 
mollit,  and  tempcrat  explained  as  historical  presents,  like 
venit ;  but  they  are  far  from  being  such.  The  passage 
contains  a  description  of  the  functions  of  the  god  of  the 
winds,  who  is,  of  course,  thought  of  by  the  poet  as  an  active 
existing  divinity.  He  is  part  of  the  machinery  of  the  gods, 
and  any  ancient  reader  of  Virgil  who  believed  in  the  im- 
ported Greek  mythology  must  believe  in  Aeolus  along 
with  the  rest.  No  room  for  a  historical  present  here,  for 
we  are  dealing  with  pure  present  time.  And  the  next 
sentence,  as  it  happens,  contains  a  point  of  syntax  which 
is,  in  my  opinion,  constantly  misinterpreted  even  in  our 
best  editions.  It  reads  thus  :  — 

Ni facial,  maria  ac  terras  caelumque  profundum 
Quippe  ferant  rapidi  secum  verrantque  per  auras. 

'  Imagine  him  not  doing  so,  they  would  surely  whirl 
along  with  them  impetuously  seas,  lands,  and  the  deep 
vault  of  heaven,  and  sweep  them  through  the  air.' 

This  conditional  sentence  is  not  a  '  condition  contrary 
to  fact';  it  does  not  denote  unfulfilled  or  non-occurrent 
action.  It  is  true  that  in  the  old  Latin  of  Plautus  we  do 
find  such  conditions  sometimes  expressed  by  the  present 
subjunctive ;  it  is  true  also  that  we  find  in  Augustan  poets, 
perhaps  in  Virgil,  some  imitations  of  this  usage.  But  ours 


40 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


is  not  one  of  them  ;  it  is  nothing  but  the  common  use  of 
the  subjunctive  in  a  future  condition ;  it  is  equivalent  to 
'  If  he  should  cease  to  restrain  them,  they  would  whirl 
forth.' 

And  there  is  another  very  striking  example  of  this  same 
sort  of  a  present  subjunctive,  also  introduced  by  ni,  in  the 
sixth  book  of  the  Aeneid,  which  is  also  wrongly  interpreted 
as  a  contrary  to  fact  condition  in  many  editions.  It  is  the 
more  interesting  to  us  to-day  because  it  is  preceded  by  an 
excellent  example  of  the  present  of  vivid  narration,  and  in- 
deed the  whole  passage  is  animate  with  life.  Aeneas  and 
the  Sibyl  have  begun  their  descent  to  Hades ;  and  the 
poet  first  sketches  in  a  few  verses  the  awful  shapes  that 
meet  their  eyes  —  Fear,  Famine,  the  Furies,  the  tree  of 
dreams,  the  stables  of  the  centaurs,  Chimaera,  Hydra,  and 
Gorgons.  In  telling  of  all  these  he  uses  that  same  present 
tense  which  he  used  in  his  account  of  Aeolus  —  the  real 
present,  for  they  are  as  truly  existent  as  Aeolus  himself. 
But  in  the  next  verse  comes  the  picture  of  Aeneas'  sud- 
den fright.  The  first  word  is  a  present  tense,  corripit,  no 
longer  a  true  present,  but  the  present  of  vivid  narration: — 

Corripit  hie  subita  trepidus  formidine  ferrum 
Aeneas,  strictamque  aciem  -venientibus  offert, 
Et,  ni  docta  comes  tenues  sine  cor  pore  vitas 
Admoneat  volitare  cava  sub  imagine formae, 
Irruat,  et  frustra  ferro  diver  beret  umbras. 

1  Here  in  the  terror  of  sudden  alarm  Aeneas  plucks 
forth  his  brand  and  presents  the  drawn  point  at  them  as 
they  come,  and  let  not  his  wise  mentor  warn  him  that  they 
are  but  semblances  of  lives  without  flesh,  flitting  in  hollow 
mockery  of  form,  he  would  be  charging  them  and  beating 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  4! 

the  shadows  this  way  and  that  with  his  brand,  and  all  in 
vain.' 

Could  anything  be  more  vividly  put  ?  It  is  hardly  trans- 
latable1 in  its  lively  anticipation  into  our  sober  English 
tongue.  How  can  an  editor  find  it  in  his  heart  to  note: 
'  the  present  subjunctive  is  used  here  for  the  imperfect  in 
a  condition  contrary  to  fact '  ?  Virgil,  I  warrant,  never 
dreamed  of  such  a  thing.  How  could  he,  starting  with  a 
vivid  present,  follow  it  up  with  the  self-denying  ordinance 
of  a  contrary  to  fact  idea  ? 

But  with  regard  to  these  clauses  with  ni,  there  is  perhaps 
something  to  be  said  for  the  editors,  who  have  not,  poor 
men,  the  time  to  investigate  every  little  point  for  them- 
selves. The  fact  is  that  such  clauses  have  never  been 
thoroughly  brought  together  from  the  different  authors 
and  systematically  treated  in  a  proper  manner.  Even  for 
single  authors  this  has  not  been  done.  And  something 
still  more  surprising  —  suppose  you  wished  to  study  ni- 
clauses  in  Virgil.  The  first  thing  to  do  would  be  to  collect 
them  all.  Easy  enough,  you  say,  from  the  Index  to  Virgil. 
But  here  is  the  surprising  thing  —  there  is  no  modern  index 
to  Virgil.  Is  not  this  remarkable,  that  with  all  the  teachers 
and  students  who  are  engaged  throughout  the  world  on  this 
author,  there  should  be  none  who  has  compiled  and  pub- 
lished a  complete  index  of  words,  since  Ribbeck  published 
his  epoch-making  text  fifty  years  ago  ?  I  recommend  this 
very  much  needed  work  to  your  thoughts — why  indeed 
should  it  not  be  a  joint  production,  the  labor  divided  among 
members  of  this  club  ? 

1 1  should  be  sorry  to  have  it  thought  that  my  translation  is  an  attempt  to 
render  the  '  original '  meaning  of  this  subjunctive. 


42  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

But  I  must  not  linger  too  long  over  questions  of  syntax 
and  usage  of  words,  lest  you  should  think  me  one  of  those 
soulless  creatures  called  gerund-grinders,  who  are  so  con- 
stantly held  up  to  mockery  by  the  opponents  of  the  Classics. 
There  are  puzzles  enough  in  our  field  of  study  for  students 
who  have  no  taste  for  these.  To  keep  for  the  moment  to 
Virgil;  how  full  of  difficulties  is,  for  instance,  the  sixth 
book  of  the  Aeneid.  Although  the  fourth  book,  as  gener- 
ally and  wrongly  interpreted,  is  of  more  interest  to  the  or- 
dinary modern  reader,  because  in  it  Virgil  seems  to  make 
a  modern  romantic  heroine  out  of  Dido  —  a  notion  which 
of  course  he  never  had  in  his  mind,  for  Dido  is  but  an 
obstacle  to  the  fulfilment  of  the  mission  of  the  Pilgrim  of 
Destiny,  Aeneas,  fato  prof ugus,  and  she  is  striving  to  retard 
the  destiny  of  Rome  and  must  be  brushed  out  of  the  way 
as  relentlessly  as  Rome  brushed  her  city  Carthage  out  of 
the  way  —  though  the  fourth  book,  I  say,  is  commonly 
read  with  greater  interest,  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  it  should 
have  for  the  serious  student  by  no  means  the  attractions 
that  are  to  be  found  in  the  sixth.  As  the  ancient  com- 
mentator Servius  remarks  :  'All  Virgil  is  full  of  knowledge, 
but  this  book  holds  the  first  place.'  And  one  of  its  attrac- 
tions is  the  riddles  and  enigmas  which  it  offers  for  our 
solution.  It  is  perfectly  certain  that  this  book  is  the  result 
of  wide  and  deep  study  on  Virgil's  part  into  the  writings 
of  his  predecessors,  both  poets  and  Greek  philosophers,  on 
the  nature  of  the  soul  and  the  state  after  death.  It  is  cer- 
tain also  that  the  book  was  left  uncompleted  by  its  author, 
and  this  is  the  principal  reason  why  it  presents  to  us  several 
all  but  insoluble  problems.  I  need  not  touch  upon  the 
greater  of  them  here ;  indeed,  time  would  not  admit  of  it, 


THE  TEACHER   OF  THE  CLASSICS  43 

and  you  must  have  pondered  them  for  yourselves.  Why, 
for  instance,  are  the  heroes  —  the  bello  caduci — in  the  fore 
part  of  Hades,  almost  in  a  place  of  punishment,  instead  of 
in  Elysium  with  Anchises?  Are  they  to  remain  there 
forever,  or  do  they  pass  on  after  a  period  of  waiting  ? 
I  shall  not  attempt  to-day  to  answer  this  question,  though 
I  have  an  answer  which  all  but  satisfies  me.  I  would  not 
have  it  wholly  satisfy  me,  for  if  it  did,  part  of  the  attrac- 
tion of  the  book  would  be  gone.  Instead,  I  shall  speak 
merely  of  two  small  points :  the  Golden  Bough,  and  the 
two  Gates  of  Sleep. 

A  huge  book  in  three  volumes  has  been  written,  as  you 
know,  by  Mr.  Frazer  on  the  Golden  Bough.  It  is  an  in- 
valuable mine  of  folklore  and  one  of  the  chief  treasures  of 
the  students  of  that  fascinating  subject,  Comparative  Reli- 
gion. Yet  I  cannot  see  how  anybody  can  agree  with 
Frazer's  view  that  the  golden  bough  of  Virgil  was  a  sprig 
of  mistletoe.  Fatal  to  this  view,  as  Andrew  Lang  has 
pointed  out,  is  the  fact  that  Virgil  himself  in  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  golden  bough  compares  it  to  mistletoe.  Could 
there  be  a  greater  absurdity  than  the  comparison  of  a 
thing  to  itself  ?  Whatever  the  bough  was,  it  was  not 
mistletoe.  But  the  carrying  of  it  as  a  passport  into  Hades 
was  no  invention  of  Virgil's.  It  had  been  used  before. 
Charon  recognized  it  when  the  Sibyl  showed  it,  and  it  is 
natural  to  think  that  she  herself  had  carried  it  on  that 
former  occasion  when,  as  she  tells  Aeneas,  she  went  down 
with  Hecate  to  the  lower  world.  Virgil  may  have  taken  it 
out  of  some  earlier  poem  now  lost  to  us  ;  but  my  own  opin- 
ion is  that  pilgrims  who  visited  the  sacred  places  about 
Lake  Avernus  —  and  we  know  that  pilgrimages  to  that 


44 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


vicinity  lasted  down  to  the  end  of  heathendom  —  that  pil- 
grims to  the  spot  in  Virgil's  time  were  required  to  carry  in 
their  hands  the  branch  of  some  tree,  a  branch  which 
Virgil  poetically  calls  the  golden  bough.  No  doubt  such 
pilgrims  would  be  told  that  some  great  hero  had  carried 
the  branch  when  he  was  there  before  them. 

As  for  the  other  point,  about  the  two  gates,  here  is 
again  a  much-discussed  question.  You  remember  that 
Virgil  says  that  one  was  made  of  horn  and  that  by  it  true 
ghosts,  verae  umbrae,  passed  out;  that  the  other  was  of 
ivory  and  that  through  it  '  deceptive  dreams '  were  sent  up 
to  the  world.  Now  Anchises  lets  Aeneas  out  by  this  latter, 
the  ivory  gate.  Why  ?  Quot  editores,  tot  sententiae,  and 
little  comfort  to  be  got  out  of  any  of  them.  Old  Servius  said 
that  the  poet  opened  the  gate  of  false  dreams  to  Aeneas  in 
order  to  indicate  that  the  whole  thing  was  fiction !  This 
comes  pretty  well  from  one  who  had  told  us  that  the  book 
was  '  full  of  knowledge.'  Neither  will  it  do  to  say  that 
Aeneas  goes  out  by  the  ivory  gate  because  he  is  not  a  true 
ghost:  he  is  not  a  deceptive  dream  either!  To  say,  as 
some  do,  that  there  is  no  point  whatever  in  the  choice  of 
the  ivory  gate  is  a  confession  of  ignorance  of  Virgil's  method 
in  composing  this  book.  Nothing,  I  venture  to  say,  abso- 
lutely nothing  is  set  down  here  without  a  reason.  We  must 
be  dealing  here  with  a  point  of  doctrine  inherited  from  the 
past.  The  best  explanation  of  the  choice  has  been  given,  I 
believe,  by  my  friend  Dr.  William  Everett  of  Adams  Acad- 
emy in  Quincy.  It  is  simple,  and  wholly  without  those  com- 
plicated theories  which  some  scholars  have  called  to  their 
aid.  There  was  a  very  widespread  belief,  which  we  find  in 
the  Greek  and  Latin  authors  from  Plato  to  Ovid,  that  dreams 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE   CLASSICS  45 

before  midnight  were  deceptive  dreams.  The  ivory  gate 
would  therefore  be  open  before  midnight,  and  the  poet,  in 
letting  Aeneas  out  by  this  gate,  merely  means  to  indicate 
that  he  left  Hades  before  midnight.  He  merely  indicates 
the  time  in  a  poetical  manner.  If  you  look  back  through 
the  book,  you  will  find  here  and  there  poetical  indications 
of  the  time  that  was  passing  (though  none  so  vague  to  us 
as  this),  from  the  hour  when  just  before  sunrise  Aeneas 
started  upon  the  descent.  He  spent  therefore  considerably 
less  than  twenty-four  hours  in  going  and  returning.  So, 
too,  Dante,  the  great  pupil  and  imitator  of  Virgil,  indicates 
by  mere  passing  allusions  here  and  there  the  time  which 
he  spent  on  his  journey.  I  am  bound  to  say  that  this  ex- 
planation of  Dr.  Everett's,  which  was  published  in  the 
Classical  Review,  has  not  met  with  that  general  acceptance 
which  I  had  expected  for  it.  Particularly  the  Germans 
scorn  it ;  perhaps  it  is  too  simple  for  them.  But  neither 
do  I  feel  absolutely  certain  of  it  myself ;  we  cannot  hope 
to  know  everything.  For  example,  have  you  ever  found 
out  why  it  was  that  Virgil,  in  his  account  of  the  boat  race, 
picked  out  the  particular  Roman  families  which  he  does 
pick  out  to  give  them  the  honor  of  being  descended  from 
the  comrades  of  Aeneas  ?  It  is  a  very  curious  choice : 
'  Mnestheus,'  he  says,  '  from  whom  comes  the  house  of 
Memmius;  Sergestus,  from  whom  the  house  of  Sergius, 
and  Cloanthus,  from  whom  thy  race,  O  Roman  Cluentius.' 
Think  of  it  —  Sergius  and  Cluentius  !  We  know  of  only 
three  or  four  Sergiuses  in  Roman  history,  and  the  only 
one  of  any  consequence  is  Sergius  Catiline  the  conspira- 
tor, for  whom  Virgil  certainly  had  no  admiration,  since 
he  puts  him  in  Tartarus,  poised  over  a  precipice  and 


46  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

terror  struck  at  the  awful  faces  of  the  Furies.  Almost 
the  only  Cluentius  that  we  know  is  Cicero's  client,  a  man 
of  very  shady  character  indeed,  in  the  defense  of  whom 
Cicero  afterwards  said  that  he  had  thrown  lots  of  dust  in 
the  eyes  of  the  jury.  Of  Virgil's  reason  for  choosing 
Memmius,  something  can  be  guessed.  It  seems  probable 
that  the  family  of  Memmius  claimed  Venus,  if  not  for  their 
ancestress,  at  least  for  their  patroness,  and  this  in  turn 
may  account  for  Lucretius's  beautiful  opening  address  to 
Venus  in  his  poem  dedicated  to  one  of  that  family.  It 
may  be  that  the  Sergian  and  Cluentian  families  boasted 
some  such  connection  with  the  great  Aeneas,  and  possibly 
some  light  might  be  thrown  on  this  puzzling  question  by 
collecting  and  studying  all  the  passages  in  which  Virgil 
singles  out  for  mention  Roman  families  that  were  existing 
in  his  day.  Possibly,  again,  it  might  lead  to  nothing.  I 
said  a  moment  ago  that  we  could  not  hope  to  know  every- 
thing. Why,  even  Cicero,  our  great  model,  even  Cicero 
didn't  know  everything  about  Latin  syntax,  if  I  may  return 
for  a  moment  to  that  fearsome  subject. 

For  example,  he  once  used  a  preposition  before  Piraeus 
instead  of  treating  it  as  the  name  of  a  town  and  so  using 
it  without  a  preposition ;  and  in  a  letter  to  Atticus  practi- 
cally admits  that  he  doesn't  know  whether  he  was  right  or 
not.  A  more  famous  example  was  that  of  the  inscription 
which  Pompey  was  going  to  cut  upon  his  new  temple  of 
Victory.  He  wished  to  inscribe  his  name  and  the  fact 
that  the  temple  was  dedicated  in  his  third  consulship  ;  but 
he  didn't  feel  sure  whether  he  ought  to  say  consul  tertium 
or  consul  tertio.  After  anxious  consideration  he  referred 
the  matter  ad  doctissimos  civitatis  —  and  naturally  enough 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  47 

the  doctissimi  disagreed.  Finally  he  consulted  Cicero,  and 
that  greatest  of  authorities,  being  unwilling  to  commit  him- 
self, said :  '  Suppose  you  don't  write  either  termination, 
but  simply  stop  at  /,  and  say  consul  tert,'  —  which  was 
accordingly  done.  And  we  cannot  be  too  grateful  to 
Cicero  for  leaving  us  this  warning  against  being  cocksure 
about  matters  of  syntax. 

This  little  story  teaches  another  lesson.  You  will  ob- 
serve that  Pompey  did  not  leave  the  language  of  his  in- 
scription to  be  selected  by  his  architect,  but  consulted  those 
whose  business  it  was  to  know  about  such  things.  It 
would  be  well  if  his  example  were  followed  in  modern  times. 
What  extraordinary  specimens  of  language  and  of  the  al- 
phabet do  our  architects  inflict  upon  us  in  their  inscriptions 
on  public  buildings,  and  even  upon  university  buildings! 
Take  a  simple  point,  this  matter  of  Roman  numerals. 
Since  the  twentieth  century  came  in,  how  often  we  see  MCM 
used  for  1900.  This  is,  of  course,  an  abbreviation,  and  is  no 
more  in  place  than  an  apostrophe  and  two  zeros  would  be ; 
or  '  naughty-naught '  as  the  students  call  it.  We  do  find 
abbreviations  of  numerals  in  Roman  tombstone  Latin,  and 
in  carelessly  made  inscriptions  where  the  stonecutter  has 
not  carefully  calculated  his  space ;  but  I  venture  to  say 
that  we  shall  not  find  IV,  IX,  or  similar  abbreviations  in 
any  carefully  made  public  inscription  of  the  classical 
Romans.  Then,  again,  if  our  modern  inscription  is  to  be 
in  classical  Latin,  the  letter  M  should  not  be  used  at  all ; 
for,  of  course,  it  does  not  stand  for  the  numeral  until  the 
second  century  after  Christ.  The  proper  numeral  sign 
should  be  employed,  which  looks  something  like  an  8 
turned  on  its  side.  But  if  the  inscription  is  to  be  English, 


48  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

why  use  Roman  numerals  in  it  ?  Our  Arabic  figures  are 
far  handsomer  and  infinitely  less  clumsy  than  the  Roman 
numerals,  and  we  can  be  pretty  sure  that  the  Romans,  who 
were  the  most  practical  people  that  ever  lived  before  Amer- 
icans were  invented,  would  have  been  quick  to  give  up 
their  bungling  method  had  they  been  acquainted  with  the 
Arabic. 

I  have  spoken  of  abbreviations.  Much  is  to  be  learned 
from  them  in  various  ways.  A  very  interesting  deduction 
has  lately  been  made  from  them  by  Professor  Traube,  the 
eminent  Latin  palaeographer.  There  are,  as  you  know,  in 
the  Vatican  Library  two  illustrated  manuscripts  of  Virgil. 
About  the  age  of  one  of  these,  the  Romanus,  there  has 
been  much  discussion.  Formerly  it  was  thought  to  have 
been  written  in  the  fourth  century :  but  more  recently  ar- 
guments have  been  adduced  pointing  to  a  later  date,  and 
now  Traube  has  shown  from  abbreviations  found  in  it  that 
it  cannot  possibly  be  earlier  than  the  sixth  century. 

The  illustrations  of  these  two  manuscripts  of  Virgil  de- 
serve, I  think,  far  more  attention  than  is  paid  to  them  in  the 
teaching  of  Virgil  in  our  schools.  In  one  or  two  of  our  edi- 
tions there  are  rude  cuts  in  outline  made  from  old  engrav- 
ings from  them  ;  but  these  give  you  no  idea  whatever  of  the 
originals,  which  are  not  outline  drawings,  but  regular  paint- 
ings in  the  miniature  style.  The  Vatican  Library,  under  the 
very  liberal  new  policy  of  his  Holiness,  the  present  Pope,  him- 
self a  Latin  scholar  of  much  ability,  has  lately  published 
photographic  facsimiles  of  these  two  manuscripts,  including 
all  the  illustrations.  Unfortunately  the  edition  is  limited 
in  number  and  the  price  is  high,  but  the  books  ought  to  be 
found  in  every  great  library.  It  would  add  greatly  to  the 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  49 

interest  of  schoolboys  and  schoolgirls  who  are  studying 
Virgil  if  they  had  copies  of  these  ancient  pictures  before 
them.  And  in  these  days  of  universal  photography  it  ought 
not  to  be  a  difficult  thing  to  bring  to  pass.  The  teacher 
might  get  permission  to  make  photographs  with  his  own 
camera  from  the  library  copy  of  the  book,  or  if  not  himself 
an  expert  in  photography,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  find  among 
his  pupils  or  acquaintances  somebody  to  do  it  for  him.  Or 
this  club  might  cause  a  set  of  photographs  to  be  made  and 
sold  at  a  nominal  price  to  its  members.  There  is  an  excel- 
lent article  in  French  by  De  Nolhac  about  the  pictures, 
which  might  well  be  translated  to  accompany  them  if  the 
scheme  which  I  have  suggested  were  carried  out. 

But  to  return  to  Cicero :  not  only  was  he  doubtful  about 
some  points,  but  we  are  much  more  doubtful  about  many 
points  which  concern  him  or  the  understanding  of  his  writ- 
ings. For  instance,  we  talk  of  the  style  of  Cicero,  as  if  he 
had  but  one  style.  But  what  does  he  say  about  this  him- 
self ?  At  the  age  of  sixty  he  writes  thus  to  Papirius 
Paetus :  — 

'  What  do  you  think  about  my  style  in  letters  ?  Aren't 
they  in  the  sermo  plebeius,  the  vulgar  tongue  ?  Yet  one 
doesn't  use  the  same  tone  in  all  his  writings.  For  what 
analogy  is  there  between  a  letter  and  a  speech  in  court,  or 
an  address  at  a  public  meeting  ?  Even  in  court  I  don't 
make  a  habit  of  handling  all  my  cases  in  the  same  style. 
Private  suits  of  slight  importance  I  plead  in  the  plainer 
style ;  those  that  affect  a  man's  civil  status  or  reputation 
in  the  more  ornate  style;  letters  I  compose  in  the  lan- 
guage of  everyday  life  —  verbis  cotidianis! 

Here,  then,  are  at  least  three  different  styles  which  we 


ijO  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

may  expect  to  find  at  the  same  period  in  our  great  model, 
and  this  ought  to  be  —  but  isn't  —  a  warning  to  those  who 
think  that  they  can  reach  the  exact  date  of  a  speech  from 
the  style  employed  in  it.  And  then  another  interesting 
question  about  Cicero:  what  was  his  personal  feeling 
about  religion  ?  This  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  questions 
to  answer  about  any  man;  on  no  topic  is  a  man  really 
more  reserved, — open,  or  even  dogmatic,  as  he  may  seem  to 
be.  We  may  be  pretty  sure  that  the  real  Cicero  does  not 
express  himself  openly  about  his  personal  religion  in  his 
public  speeches;  and  in  his  philosophical  works  he  is 
rather  the  expounder  of  systems,  of  theories,  and  then 
again  of  ethics,  than  of  religion  in  the  strictly  personal 
sense.  There  remains  to  us  no  source  of  knowledge  on 
this  point  except  the  collection  of  over  seven  hundred  of 
Cicero's  Letters.  I  looked  them  through  last  summer  in 
the  hope  of  gleaning  information  on  this  and  several 
other  subjects  in  which  I  am  interested.  I  can  tell  you, 
therefore,  from  my  own  observation  that  there  are  only  a 
few  passages  in  the  letters  which  throw  any  light  on  the 
subject  of  Cicero's  personal  religion;  and  of  these,  only 
two  seem  to  me  very  significant.  Both  are  addressed  to 
his  wife,  —  but  who  can  mention  her  without  pausing  for 
a  moment  to  marvel  at  that  other  puzzle  of  Cicero's 
divorce  of  Terentia  after  over  thirty  years  of  married  life, 
when  he  was  more  than  sixty  years  old,  followed,  as  it  soon 
was,  by  his  marriage  with  a  rich  young  girl,  his  ward,  and 
his  prompt  divorce  of  her  ?  But  we  have  no  time  for  this 
interesting  problem  to-day.  The  first  of  the  two  passages 
in  the  letters  to  which  I  have  referred  was  written  by 
Cicero  in  one  of  those  moments  of  despair  and  bitterness 


THE  TEACHER   OF  THE   CLASSICS  51 

when  the  heart  speaks  out.  On  his  way  into  exile  he 
writes  back  from  Brundisium  to  Terentia  :  '  I  only  wish, 
my  dear,  to  see  you  as  soon  as  possible  and  to  die  in  your 
arms,  since  neither  the  gods  whom  you  have  worshiped 
with  such  pure  devotion,  nor  men,  whom  /  have  spent  my 
time  in  serving,  have  made  us  any  return.'  This  differ- 
ence between  the  faith  of  a  woman  and  the  worldliness  of 
a  man  is  only  too  often  illustrated  in  our  modern  life. 
The  other  passage  is  of  a  similar  nature,  though  it  was 
written  nearly  ten  years  later.  He  had  been  melancholy, 
anxious,  and  a  burden  to  those  about  him ;  '  but  all  these 
uneasy  thoughts,'  he  writes,  '  I  have  got  rid  of  and 
ejected.  The  reason  of  it  all  I  discovered  the  day  after 
I  parted  from  you.  I  threw  up  pure  bile  during  the  night, 
and  was  at  once  so  much  relieved  that  it  seemed  to  me  some 
god  worked  the  cure.  To  this  god,  you,  after  your  wont, 
will  make  full  and  pious  acknowledgment' 

No  intention  expressed,  you  perceive,  of  making  any 
such  acknowledgment  himself.  This  function  is  to  be  left 
to  a  woman. 

These  two  passages  which  I  have  called  significant  may 
seem  slight  evidence  on  which  to  base  one's  opinion  of 
a  man's  attitude  toward  religion,  and  they  would  indeed 
be  slight  were  it  not  that  they  agree  exactly  with  the 
general  attitude  of  educated  men  in  the  age  in  which 
Cicero  lived.  Perhaps  there  never  was  an  age  in  which 
unbelief  was  wider  spread.  The  genuine  old  Roman  gods 
(except  Lares,  Penates,  and  Genius,  that  is  to  say  except 
the  family  gods)  were  all  but  forgotten,  and  the  proper 
way  to  worship  them  had  become  a  topic  for  antiquarian 
research.  The  Romans,  of  course,  had  never  had  a 


52  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

mythology  of  their  own  such  as  the  Greeks  had  —  that  is, 
a  history  of  the  dealings  of  divine  beings  with  one  another 
and  with  men.  What  is  sometimes  thought  of  as  Roman 
mythology  —  I  mean  the  stories  found  in  Virgil,  Ovid,  and 
Horace  about  gods  and  heroes — are  all  Greek,  not 
Roman  at  all,  and  even  in  Latin  literature  they  really 
belong  later  than  the  time  of  Cicero.  These  Greek  stories 
were  commonly  regarded,  Cicero  says,  as  idle  tales.  In 
his  day  the  best  educated  men  were  sceptics  or  rationalists. 
Thus  we  see  that  even  these  two  little  passages  may  be 
considered  as  pretty  trustworthy  indications  of  one  side  of 
the  character  of  Cicero. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  letters  are  a  perfect 
mine  of  information  on  all  sorts  of  topics  relating  to  the 
character  and  life  of  Cicero.  For  example :  it  is  very  in- 
teresting to  read,  in  such  confidential  epistles  as  he  wrote 
to  Atticus,  what  he  himself  thought  about  his  own 
speeches;  how  he  laughed  over  the  way  in  which  he  threw 
dust  in  the  eyes  of  a  jury ;  or  how  thickly  he  laid  on  the 
paint  in  ornamenting  his  account  of  the  Catiline  affair. 
Then  again  his  relations  with  Julius  Caesar  come  out  most 
clearly  in  the  letters  which  passed  between  them,  or  in 
Cicero's  letters  to  others  about  Caesar  and  Caesar's  views 
of  Cicero  himself.  Is  it  not  too  bad  that  we  do  not  try 
to  bring  these  two  men  together  in  our  teaching?  We 
deliberately  separate  them.  We  set  them  in  different 
years  of  the  school  course  and  give  our  boys  no  chance  to 
see  how  they  played  into  each  other's  hands  or  against 
each  other.  We  lead  our  boys  to  think  of  them  as  always 
the  deadliest  foes  ;  but  the  two  had  much  in  common. 
Both  were  lovers  of  literature.  But  what  schoolboy  ever 


THE  TEACHER   OF  THE   CLASSICS  53 

hears  of  Caesar  as  a  literary  man  ?  They  think  of  him  as 
a  soldier,  or  as  a  constructor  of  grammatical  puzzles. 
And  here  again  I  yield  to  the  temptation  to  speak  of  a 
point  of  syntax  —  but  it  shall  be  the  last  —  and  indeed  I 
foresee  that  I  am  approaching  the  end  of  these  somewhat 
disconnected  remarks.  The  point  to  which  I  now  refer 
concerns  the  expression  of  the  apodosis  of  a  condition 
contrary  to  fact  in  indirect  discourse.  What  a  pity  it  was 
that  Caesar  allowed  himself  to  write  the  sentence  which 
stands  in  the  29th  chapter  of  the  fifth  book,  which  is,  being 
translated,  as  follows  :  — 

'  (He  said)  that  he  thought  Caesar  was  gone  into  Italy ; 
otherwise,  the  Carnutes  would  not  have  formed  their  de- 
sign of  killing  Tasgetius,  and  the  Eburones,  if  he  were 
at  hand,  would  not  be  coming  against  the  camp.' 

Here  for  '  would  not  be  coming '  we  have  ventures  esse 
—  and  this  unfortunate  phrase  has  led  to  a  special  category 
in  almost  all  our  grammars.  We  are  led  by  them  to  think 
that  this  is  one  of  the  regular  ways  of  expressing  in 
direct  discourse  an  apodosis  of  action  non-occurrent.  But 
the  fact  is,  I  believe,  that  this  is  the  only  place  in  any 
Latin  author  where  such  a  rule  is  borne  out.  In  every 
other  passage  of  the  kind  we  have  the  future  participle  with 
fttisse.  In  my  school  grammar  I  have  ventured  to  give  an 
explanation  of  this  unique  phenomenon  in  Caesar.  In 
that  passage,  the  context  clearly  shows  that  ventures  esse 
represents  the  imperfect  subjunctive  of  the  direct  discourse. 
But  ordinarily  the  future  participle  with  esse  might  seem  to 
represent  a  future  indicative.  Hence,  I  believe  that  to 
avoid  ambiguity  the  Romans  did  not  try  to  express  present 
time  in  apodoses  of  this  kind  in  indirect  discourse.  It 


54 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


was  easy  to  avoid  it,  and  we  ought  to  teach  our  boys  to 
do  so. 

This  whole  matter  of  formal  indirect  discourse  is  dispro- 
portionately prevalent  in  Caesar.  I  mean  disproportionately 
as  compared  to  its  appearance  in  other  writers.  The  re- 
sult is  that  a  disproportionate  amount  of  space  is  given  to 
it  in  our  grammars  and  a  disproportionate  amount  of  time 
in  our  teaching.  The  poor  boy  struggles  for  weeks  over 
its  problems,  and  when  he  has  mastered  them  and  gone  on 
to  other  authors,  he  finds  very  little  opportunity  to  exercise 
in  them  the  skill  which  he  has  got  from  the  study  of  Caesar. 
This  consequence  reminds  me  very  much  of  another  result 
which  comes  out  of  the  stress  which  we  are  now  laying 
upon  what  is  called  '  Reading  at  Sight.'  I  realize  that  I 
am  now  about  to  step  on  very  ticklish  ground ;  and  I  want 
to  begin  by  saying  that  I  am  speaking  my  own  thoughts, 
not  those  of  my  colleagues,  for  I  do  not  know  what  they 
think  on  this  topic ;  and  that  you  must  not  think  that  I 
represent  them  or  Harvard  College  or  anybody  or  anything 
but  myself.  What  I  want  to  suggest  to  your  thoughts  is 
this  :  our  boys  take  a  vast  amount  of  pains  in  learning  to 
read  Xenophon  at  sight,  and  then,  after  they  have  got  the 
power,  they  find  there  is  no  more  Greek  like  Xenophon 
upon  which  they  can  exercise  it.  And  to  a  less  degree  this 
is  true  of  Latin.  Power  to  read  Caesar  at  sight  does  not 
give  a  like  power  over  any  other  author.  Now  understand 
me.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  should  abandon  altogether 
the  teaching  of  reading  at  sight.  It  does  undoubtedly 
give  a  valuable  kind  of  power  over  the  language,  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  it  enables  the 
student  to  carry  on  his  studies  of  Greek  and  Latin,  after 


THE  TEACHER   OF  THE  CLASSICS  55 

he  gets  to  college,  with  much  greater  ease  than  students 
prepared  under  the  old  regime ;  and  it  also  seems  to  me 
that  this  long  drill  in  a  single  author  in  Greek  and  a 
single  author  in  Latin  is  not  the  way  to  encourage  students 
to  continue  their  studies  of  the  Classics  in  college.  It 
opens  up  to  them  no  vista  whatever  of  the  wide  and 
noble  fields  of  literature  which  are  there  to  be  found. 
The  subject-matter  of  Xenophon  and  Caesar  is  too  much 
of  the  same  kind  —  and  that  of  a  very  narrow  kind, 
being  distinctly  military.  It  was  not  always  thus  in 
the  school  course.  As  late  as  the  time  when  I  myself  was 
at  school  we  were  required  to  read  Sallust  as  well  as  Caesar 
for  the  elementary  examination ;  and  in  Greek  we  had  to 
read  not  only  Xenophon,  but  selections  from  Plato  and 
Herodotus  and  a  bit  from  Thucydides  as  well.  Of  course 
in  the  schooldays  of  our  fathers  and  grandfathers  the 
authors  read  in  schools  covered  even  a  wider  field.  They 
were  not  all  writers  of  Attic  Greek  or  of  Classical  Latin — 
but  what  of  that  ?  they  were  great  writers,  —  immortal 
names,  —  and  they  showed  boys  that  there  was  something 
else  in  the  Classics  besides  marching  by  parasangs  and  mak- 
ing speeches  in  indirect  discourse.  And  boys  were  attracted 
to  go  on  to  read  more  of  ancient  literature.  Parts  of  Greek 
plays  were  read ;  they  are  read  still  in  English  schools ;  there 
are  books  of  selections  from  Greek  tragedies  and  comedies 
prepared  for  the  English  schoolboy.  Ask  old  gentlemen 
what  Greek  and  Latin  books  they  remember  with  most 
pleasure,  and  ten  to  one  they  will  answer  'the  books 
of  selections  from  prose  and  verse.'  And  how  much 
pleasanter  it  must  have  been  for  the  teacher  to  vary  his 
reading  with  his  pupils  instead  of  trudging  on  year  after 


56  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

year  over  the  same  road.     And  if  pleasanter,  how  much 
better  he  must  have  taught ! 

'Oh,'  but  you  will  say,  'we  are  teaching  what  the 
colleges  require  ! '  I  reply :  that  answer  might  have  done 
once  upon  a  time,  but  it  will  serve  its  purpose  no  longer. 
Look  at  the  changes  in  the  college  admission  requirements 
during  the  past  twenty  years.  Many  of  them  are  in 
answer  to  the  demands  of  secondary  schools.  In  these 
days  of  organizations  of  teachers  —  of  organizations  such 
as  yours,  for  instance — you  may  depend  upon  it  that 
changes  which  you  agree  upon  as  good,  and  for  which  you 
can  give  strong  reasons,  are  pretty  sure  to  be  adopted.  I 
would  not,  then,  have  you  love  Caesar  less,  or  Xenophon 
less,  but  I  would  have  you  love  Greek  and  Latin  literature 
more,  and  I  would  have  you  make  your  pupils  love  it  a 
great  deal  more.  To  be  sure,  this  means  more  work  for 
a  time  for  some  teachers  who  have  not  familiarized  them- 
selves sufficiently  with  the  literature,  but  what  of  that? 
We  are  all  workers,  and  there  stretches  before  us  the  many 
weeks  —  some  people  think  the  too  many  weeks  —  of  the 
summer  vacation.  I  don't  know  how  it  is  with  you,  but 
with  me  that  is  about  the  only  period  in  the  year  when  I 
have  any  time  for  new  work  or  for  the  review  of  old  — 
time  to  sit  under  a  tree  with  a  pipe  and  get  introduced  to 
an  ancient  author  whom  I  have  never  met  before ;  or  time 
to  feel  about  me  once  more  the  charm  of  the  immortals 
whom  I  learned  to  know  long  ago.  And  we  must  take 
some  of  that  time,  or  some  other  time,  to  consider  the 
question  why  we  teach  the  Classics  at  all.  The  old  answers 
to  this  question  will  no  longer  serve.  We  can  no  longer 
contend  that  the  acquisition  of  two  dead  languages  and  a 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  57 

certain  knowledge  of  the  contents  of  works  composed  over 
two  thousand  years  ago,  are  the  best  preparation  which  all 
boys  and  girls  can  have  for  all  the  demands  of  life.  But 
neither  is  any  subject,  no  matter  how  modern,  an  adequate 
preparation  for  all  the  demands  of  life.  Nobody  could 
hold  such  a  view  of  Physics  or  Psychology  or  Philosophy 
or  Mathematics,  and  there  is  no  longer  any  reason  why  it 
should  be  held  of  Classics.  Two  or  three  hundred  years 
ago,  this  was  not  the  case.  Men  went  to  school  to  the 
ancients  as  their  best  teachers  in  all  matters,  and  the  men 
of  those  days  were  not  mistaken.  When  the  Greek  and 
Roman  literatures  were  rediscovered  after  the  Dark  Ages 
and  people  began  to  read  about  the  ancients,  they  found 
themselves  inferior  to  those  ancients  in  very  many  points 
of  civilization  and  learning.  They  felt  like  children  before 
their  teachers  ;  or  rather,  they  had  for  the  ancients  a  feeling 
of  veneration  which  few  children,  I  am  afraid,  have  for 
their  teachers  to-day.  They  looked  upon  the  ancients  as 
endowed  with  the  profoundest  sort  of  learning,  which  had 
been  handed  down  from  one  nation  to  another,  from  Egyptians 
to  Greeks,  from  Greeks  to  Romans.  They  were  dazzled  by 
the  great  productions  of  Greece  and  Rome  as  compared 
with  the  barren  centuries  immediately  preceding  themselves. 
And  it  is  wonderful  how  long  this  respectful  attitude  to- 
wards the  ancients  survived.  It  survived  long  after  great 
world-changing  inventions  such  as  gunpowder  or  printing; 
long  after  epoch-making  discoveries  such  as  that  of  oxygen 
and  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood ;  and  long  after  the 
composition  of  modern  literatures.  Shakspere  and  Bacon 
came  and  went ;  Descartes  and  Leibnitz  lived  and  died ;  a 
new  world  was  discovered  in  America;  and  still  people 


$8  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

talked  as  if  the  ancients  were  in  some  mysterious  way  a 
higher  order  of  beings,  superior  in  everything  to  moderns. 
This  opinion  prevailed  until  half  way  through  the  nineteenth 
century,  but  nobody  would  seek  to  defend  it  now. 

I  remember  that  Professor  F.  D.  Allen 1  once  said  that 
in  former  times  men  approached  the  ancients  'on  their 
knees.'  We  no  longer  assume  this  attitude.  We  do  not 
study  Greek  and  Latin  because  we  think  that  the  ancients 
were  blessed  with  a  higher  civilization  than  our  own,  and 
we  cannot  pretend  that  this  study  affords  more  than  a  par- 
tial training  for  life.  The  overidealization  of  the  ancients 
has  perhaps  done  more  real  harm  to  the  cause  of  classical 
studies  than  any  other  factor.  You  remember  how  the 
Athenians  got  tired  of  hearing  Aristides  called  '  the  Just,' 
and  voted  for  his  ostracism.  So  it  was  that  men  wearied 
of  hearing  that  the  ancients  and  their  literature  were  infi- 
nitely superior  to  everything  modern,  —  until  at  last  it  is 
asserted  in  some  quarters  that  the  Classics  have  not  even  a 
disciplinary  value  in  the  education  of  young  pupils.  This 
notion  is  of  course  as  mistaken  as  the  other,  and  the 
people  who  put  it  forward  are  generally  people  who 
know  little  or  nothing  about  the  manner  in  which  classi- 
cal studies  are  pursued  at  the  present  time.  The  fact  is, 
as  I  have  said,  that  our  attitude  has  wholly  changed. 
Classical  studies  have  in  recent  times  shared  in  the  great 
progress  made  in  all  studies.  We  now  look  upon  the  an- 
cients as  men  like  ourselves ;  they  were  human,  therefore 
they  often  erred.  We  are  not  afraid  to  find  fault  with 
what  is  feeble  or  even  really  mistaken  in  ancient  litera- 

1  From  one  of  his  unpublished  lectures  I  have  drawn  much  of  the  latter 
half  of  the  preceding  paragraph. 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  59 

ture.  Formerly,  all  ancient  writers,  not  merely  the  great- 
est, were  venerated ;  but  we  no  longer  think  of  applying 
the  same  standards  of  comparison  to  compositions  of  dif- 
ferent periods  or  by  different  kinds  of  men  or  by  the  same 
man  at  different  times  in  his  life.  While  every  scholar 
knows  that  almost  all  our  forms  of  modern  literature  are 
based  upon  the  Greek,  and  while  it  is  universally  admitted 
that  in  some  literary  forms  the  Greeks  were  gifted  far 
beyond  any  modern  people,  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
are  works  in  Greek  which  are  merely  trivial  or  even  con- 
temptible. Again,  take  the  matter  of  civilization ;  nobody 
should  pretend  that  the  Greek  civilization  was  superior  to 
ours  in  all  respects.  If  we  could  take  a  train  and  travel 
to  ancient  Athens,  I  think  that  we  should  find  ourselves 
on  the  whole  pretty  uncomfortable  there.  To  be  sure, 
many  beautiful  things,  far  surpassing  what  we  see  in 
modern  cities,  would  be  all  about  us;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  should  miss  many  appliances  for  physical  com- 
fort which  we  have  gained  through  modern  invention  and 
which  we  have  come  to  think  of  as  among  the  necessaries 
of  life.  And  more  than  this,  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted 
that  the  ancient  Athenians  were  vastly  our  inferiors  in 
private  morality,  in  humanity,  and  in  regard  for  law.  But 
the  comparison  of  civilizations  of  different  nations  and 
ages  is  an  extremely  dangerous  thing,  if  we  try  to  say 
that  one  is  higher  than  the  other.  This  is  because  civili- 
zation is  not  determinable  mathematically.  To  one  man 
civilization  may  mean  clean  streets,  to  another  it  may 
mean  sculpture.  We  need  to  understand  the  man  and 
his  surroundings  before  we  can  postulate  anything  about 
his  position  in  the  scale  of  civilization. 


60  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

It  is  in  this  spirit  that  at  the  present  time  scholars  are 
more  and  more  approaching  the  ancients  and  their  litera- 
ture. We  come  to  them  wishing  to  understand  them 
rather  than  to  lavish  upon  them  fulsome  praise  or  to 
blame  them  for  the  lack  of  attributes  which  they  could  not 
possibly  possess.  I  am  reminded  here  of  another  saying 
of  Professor  Allen.  He  once  remarked:  'We  think  of 
the  Greeks  and  Romans  as  ancients ;  but  when  they  were 
alive,  they  thought  themselves  as  modern  as  anybody.' 
This  is  the  true  spirit  which  ought  to  actuate  us ;  to  try  to 
understand  the  ancients  as  men  of  like  clay  with  ourselves, 
and  to  recognize  in  their  literature  the  outgrowth  of  influ- 
ences, and  to  seek  to  learn  what  these  influences  were. 

But  we  must  not  be  content  with  this.  If  a  teacher  has 
not  tried  to  show  his  pupils  not  merely  the  influence  of 
Virgil's  own  times  upon  Virgil,  but  also  Virgil's  influence 
on  the  history  of  poetic  literature  that  has  followed,  he 
has  not  done  his  duty  to  that  great  author ;  he  has  left  him 
as  an  isolated  phenomenon.  If  a  teacher  has  not  tried  to 
show  his  pupils  that  it  is  the  influence  of  living  thought 
that  gives  rise  to  what  we  call  rules  of  syntax,  not  rules  of 
syntax  that  govern  the  expression  of  living  thought,  he 
well  deserves  the  opprobrious  epithet  of  gerund-grinder. 
If  you  reflect  over  what  I  have  said  about  syntactical 
points  to-day,  you  will  see  that  the  former  is  the  line  from 
which  I  have  approached  them.  Thus  it  may  appear  that 
perhaps  after  all  there  has  been  a  certain  unity  in  what  I 
have  termed  my  'rambling  remarks.'  Possibly  you  may 
recognize  in  them  a  kind  of  plea  for  the  liberal  literary 
study  of  the  Classics.  Not  literary  study  in  the  sense  of 
that  definition  which  I  once  heard  :  '  literary  study ;  yes ; 


THE  TEACHER  OF  THE  CLASSICS  6 1 

that's  where  you  all  sit  round  and  somebody  reads  the 
Greek  out  loud,  and  then  you  all  say  fine  ! '  Not  this  at 
all  —  but  that  general  literary  study  which  must  be  based 
upon  the  understanding  of  three  things :  first,  the  influ- 
ences of  time  and  surroundings  which  led  the  author  to 
write  what  he  has  written ;  secondly,  what  was  the  au- 
thor's message  to  his  contemporaries ;  thirdly,  what  ought 
to  be  his  message  to  us.  If  we  have  no  time  for  the 
study  and  teaching  of  these  principles,  let  us  consider 
whether  we  have  not  been  devoting  too  much  time  to 
other  things  :  to  syntax,  for  instance,  studied  for  the  mere 
sake  of  syntax,  for  the  sake  of  mere  categories,  a  sort  of 
pigeonholing,  of  which  a  great  deal  too  much  is  done  to-day 
in  this  land ;  or  to  reading  at  sight,  for  the  sake  of  a 
facility  which  will  lead  to  nothing  but  the  passing  of  an 
examination ;  or  to  the  marking  of  quantity,  particularly 
of  'hidden  quantity,'  with  which  boys  should  seldom,  if 
ever,  be  troubled.  If  we  have  been  mistaken  in  these  or 
in  other  ways,  it  is  never  too  late  to  change  our  methods. 
For,  depend  upon  it,  the  salvation  of  the  study  of  the 
Classics  is  in  nobody's  hands  but  our  own. 


THE  REAL  PERSIUS1 

'  Innocuos  censura  potest  permittere  lusus ' 

FEW  literary  men,  either  in  ancient  or  in  modern  times, 
have  been  blessed  with  so  spotless  a  reputation  as  that 
of  Persius.  And  yet  how  slight  is  the  evidence  on  which 
it  rests!  This  evidence  consists  of  only  a  few  words, 
written  we  cannot  be  sure  by  whom  or  when.  They  are 
found  in  the  Vita  of  our  manuscripts,  and  are  as  follows :  — 

fuit  morum  lenissimorum,  verecundiae  virginalis,  format  pulchrae 
.  .  .  futffrugt,  pudicus. 

Upon  these  words  are  based  the  flattering  eulogies 
which  we  read  in  every  modern  commentary  on  the  poet. 
Yet  with  the  usual  blindness  of  commentators,  a  most 
significant  passage  in  the  same  Vita  has  remained  all  but 
unnoticed,  a  passage  which,  if  approached  in  the  true 
spirit  of  philological  investigation,  proves  to  be  the  key 
to  the  understanding  of  the  poet's  whole  life,  and  opens  a 
door  through  which  scholars  can  pass  to  explore  anew  for 
a  true  estimate  of  his  character.  And  where  is  this  esti- 
mate to  be  sought  ?  Dr.  O.  W.  Holmes  (who,  as  sharing 
the  double  mission  of  physician  and  poet,  is,  as  we  shall 
soon  see,  the  fittest  authority  to  cite  in  this  connection)  has 
in  his  Life  of  Emerson  pointed  out  that  no  man  writes 
other  than  his  own  experience.  With  this  golden  prin- 
ciple in  mind,  we  approach  the  writings  of  Persius,  and 

1From  the  Harvard  Monthly,  1898,  xxvi,  47  ff. 
62 


THE   REAL  PERSIUS  63 

the  feeble  farthing  candle  of  the  Vita  straightway  burns 
dim  indeed  beside  the  electric  search  light  which  breaks 
forth  from  the  poems  themselves.  In  an  instant  the  poet 
appears  in  his  true  colors,  as  a  broken-down  bon  vivant, 
a  libertine,  in  short  a  wanton  of  the  deepest  dye. 

The  passage  in  the  Vita  which  gives  the  investigator 
his  first  trace  of  the  truth  is  as  follows : — 

Decessit  vttio  stomachi  anno  aetatis  xxx. 

This  is  surely  a  most  remarkable  statement,  and  yet 
how  the  molish,  bat-like  commentators  have  obscured  its 
real  meaning !  Even  from  a  pen  like  that  of  Otto  Jahn 
could  flow  such  stuff  as  this :  '  iuvenem  indefesso  studio 
laborantem  immatura  mors  abstimsit'  (Prolegomena,  p. 
XLV).  And  this  is  all !  With  his  finger  on  the  clue,  he 
fails  to  follow  it  up.  Or  was  it  perfidy  ?  Did  he  fear  to 
lift  the  veil  and  show  us  his  idol  as  he  really  was  ?  But 
such  an  inquiry  may  be  reserved  for  a  dissertation  de  Per- 
fidia  Doctorum.  I  shall  not  be  deterred  by  any  such  fear, 
but  shall  boldly  enter  upon  the  quest  of  the  truth.  And 
truth  forbids  me,  in  this  age  of  octogenarian  scholars,  and 
in  this  vicinity,  to  believe,  as  Jahn  would  have  me,  that 
the  stomach  1  of  a  young  man  was  ever  so  much  injured 
by  study  that  he  died.  We  shall  soon  see  that  Persius 
met  with  no  such  Utopian  end. 

But  one  word  more  before  we  come  to  the  poet's  own 
works.  Every  student  of  pedagogics,  from  Quintilian 
down,  has  recognized  what  a  lasting  impression,  for  good 

1 1  cast  aside  for  the  time  and  reserve  for  another  opportunity  the  tempt- 
ing conjecture  that  the  writer  of  the  Vita  (probably  some  drowsy  monk)  was 
translating  from  the  Greek  and  mistook  errata,  mouth.,  for  stomachus,  stomach. 
If  there  is  anything  in  this,  it  may  be  that  Persius  was  murdered  for  his  free- 
dom of  speech  —  probably  by  Nero. 


64  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

or  ill,  is  made  upon  a  boy  by  his  earliest  teacher.  Now 
who  was  the  earliest  teacher  of  Persius?  None  other 
than  the  infamous  Remmius  Palaemon,  a  creature  so 
abandoned  that  even  an  old  libertine  like  Tiberius  and  a 
half-witted  imperial  figurehead  like  Claudius  united  in  de- 
claring him  unfit,  in  spite  of  his  learning,  to  be  an  in- 
structor of  youth.1  Jahn  himself  does  not  conceal  this 
truth ;  he  calls  Palaemon  a  man  immodicae  luxuriae. 
But  what  says  Conington  ?  Perfidy  again  !  He  writes  : 
'The  silence  with  which  Persius  passes  over  this  part 
of  his  experience  may  perhaps  be  regarded  as  significant ' 
(the  italics  are  mine).  Significant  of  what,  trifler  ?  One 
must  be  an  augur  not  to  laugh  at  such  a  Delphic  utter- 
ance as  this.  But  '  silence '  ?  We  shall  see  that  Persius 
is  very  far  from  silent  on  what  he  learned  from  this 
wretch. 

I  approach  now  Persius's  own  works,  being  careful  to 
use  the  latest  German  text,  the  third  edition  of  Bucheler. 
The  very  first  line  of  the  prologue  2  is  striking :  — 
Nee  font  e  labra  prolui  caballino. 

Persius  is  often  enigmatic,  but  here  his  riddle  is  easy  to 
read.     These  words  clearly  mean  (under  the  figure  of  a 
horse-trough) '  I  never  took  a  drink  of  water  in  my  life.' 
Was  he  not  a  drinker  then  ?     On  this,  see  5,  166, 
Ebrius  ante  fores  extincta  cum  face  canto. 

And  we  know  even  the  kind  of  wine  that  he  preferred ; 
cf.  3,  i  ff.:  — 

1  Suet.  Gramm.  23. 

8  Striking,  too,  may  be  the  fact  that  the  wily  Bucheler  now  calls  the  pro- 
logue an  epilogue  in  order  to  tuck  it  away  out  of  sight  at  the  end  of  the 
satires. 


THE  REAL  PERSIUS  6$ 

iam  clarum  mane  fenestras 
intrat  et  angustas  extendit  lumine  rimas. 
Stertimus^  indomitum  quod  despumare  Falernum. 

A  truly  disgusting  picture  to  be  drawn  of  himself  by 
one  so  young !  But  he  was  as  crazy  for  food  as  for 
drink;  and,  turning  again  to  the  prologue,  we  find  per- 
haps the  most  shameless  deification  of  the  appetite  known 
in  the  poetry  of  any  land  or  time  (vs.  10), 

Magister  artis  ingenique  largitor, 
VENTER. 

This  then  was  the  Master  he  worshiped  —  not  Cor- 
nutus,  who  by  the  way  seems  to  have  been  led  astray  by 
his  pupil.  Of  the  great  philosopher  I  wish  to  speak  with 
reverence,  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  yielded  and  fell. 
Else,  there  is  no  meaning  in  these  words  of  the  young 
epicure  addressed  to  the  sage  (5,  41  f.) :  — 

Tecum  etenim  longos  memini  consumere  soles 
et  tecum  primas  epulis  decerpere  nodes. 

Obviously  they  feasted  together  all  day  and  the  first 
part  of  the  night.  But  what  immediately  follows  ?  — 

Vnum  opus  et  requiem  pariter  disponimus  ambo 
atque  verecunda  laxamus  seria  mensa. 

Here  opus  refers  to  the  eating  described  in  the  forego- 
ing,—  to  eating,  the  real  work  of  Persius;  but  requiem, 
etc.,  give  another  repulsive  picture.  Replete  with  food, 
the  gray-haired  philosopher  and  the  prematurely  bald2 

1  It  will  not  do  to  argue  from  his  use  of  the  plural  that  he  speaks  here  of 
Romans  in  general  and  not  of  himself.     The  '  Plural  of  Modesty '  (used  to 
this  day  by  editors)  is  so  well  known  in  Latin  as  to  make  references  to  the 
grammars  unnecessary.     Persius's  frequent  use  of  it  is  perhaps  his  sole  claim 
to  the  title  of  pudicus  homo,  given  him  in  the  Vita. 

2  Cf.  I,  9,  cum  ad  canitiem  et  nostrum  istud  vivere  triste  asptxi. 


66  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

young  scholar  (scholar,1  forsooth !)  sink  back  side  by  side 
(pariter)  to  sleep  off 2  the  effects  of  their  gormandizing. 
But  their  sleep  is  short.  They  awake  soon  and,  doubt- 
less in  the  middle  of  the  night,  take  a  modest  snack  (yere- 
cunda  mensa,  what  is  now  called  a  'night  lunch '). 

Gluttony  inevitably  leads  to  selfishness ;  hence  we  find 

Persius  crying  (6,  22} :  — 

Vtar  ego,  utar, 
nee  rhombos  idea  libertis  ponere  lautus, 

wherein  he  plainly  says  that  he  will  not  waste  good  food 
upon  his  dependants.  Gluttony,  too,  leads  one  to  mock  at 
economy ;  and  so  we  find  him  ridiculing  a  gentleman  who 
kept  up  the  simple  meals  of  the  Republic  (4,  30) :  — 

tunicatum  cum  sale  mordens 
caepe, 

This  old  worthy  munched  his  onions  with  their  jackets 
on  and  cared  for  no  sauce  but  salt ;  Persius  must  have 
salads  and  relishes:  recusem  cenare  sine  undo  (6,  15);  et 
piper  et  pernae,  Marsi  monumenta  clientis  (3,  75  ) ;  evidently 
his  poor  country  tenants  were  forced  to  send  pepper  and 
gammons  to  their  rich  landlord.  He  mocks  also  at  philo- 
sophic studies  in  comparison  with  the  pleasures  of  the  table 
(3,85):- 

hoc  est  quod palles  ?  cur  guts  non  prandeat  hoc  estf 

One  throat  is  not  enough  for  our  gourmand ;  he  wants  a 
hundred  (5,  26):  — 

Ego  centenas  ausim  deposcere  fauces. 

1  That  Persius  hated  study  is  clear  from  3,  44,  where  he  tells  us  that  he 
used  to  pretend  to  have  sore  eyes  in  order  to  get  excused  from  work  at 
school. 

2  Cf.  3i  59.  oscitat  hesternum. 


THE   REAL   PERSIUS  6/ 

An  unthinking  reader  might  be  deceived  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  this  verse  by  the  beginning  of  the  same  Satire : 

Vatibus  hie  mos  est  ,  .  . 

centum  or  a  et  linguas  optare  .  .  . 

But  to  the  researcher  after  truth  this  is  interesting  only 
as  the  sole  instance  in  which  Persius  seems  to  be  shamed 
into  pretending  that  his  own  gluttony  was  a  vice  common 
to  poets  in  general. 

So  much  for  one  vice.  Of  the  other,  and  the  more  fatal, 
it  is  not  my  purpose  to  speak  at  length.  The  obscenity  of 
Persius  is  well  known.  The  best  way  to  find  the  worst 
passages  is  to  turn  to  Conington's  edition,  which  contains 
the  Latin  text  on  the  left-hand  pages,  on  the  right  a  trans- 
lation into  English  prose.  By  way  of  calling  attention  to 
the  passages  now  in  question,  the  translator  has  left  blank 
spaces  on  the  right-hand  page  where  translations  would 
ordinarily  stand.  The  plan  succeeds  admirably,  and  even 
a  novice  in  Latin  will  find  no  difficulty  in  discovering  at 
once  the  coarsest  passages  in  the  poems. 

We  have  seen  what  Persius's  practice  was.  Let  us  now 
hear  some  of  his  preaching  :  — 

Indulge  genio,  carparmus  dukia  (5,  151). 

What  could  be  more  typically  Epicurean  ? 

Messe  tenus  propria  vive  et  granarta,  fas  est, 
emole  (6,  25), 

that  is,  live  up  to  your  income,  and  don't  save  anything. 
A  friend's  birthday  comes  round,  and  suggests  only  an  op- 
portunity for  drinking  (funde  me  rum,  2,  3).  What  does 
the  discharged  soldier  (5,  74)  receive  as  the  reward  of  his 


68  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

valorous  deeds  ?    Not  honor  and  glory,  but  a  truly  Persian l 
recompense,  something  to  eat :  — 

Emerutt,  scabiosum  tesserulafar 
possidet. 

Now  we  find  the  poet  giving  advice  to  a  young  fellow 
who  has  lived  an  idle  life.  What  is  he  to  do  ?  Study  ? 
Far  from  it !  But  (5,  1 36) :  — 

tolle  recens  primus  piper  ex  sitiente  camelo. 
And  finally  he  gives  us  the  gist  of  all  his  philosophy,  his 
summum  bonum,  in  the  words  (4,  17)  :  — 

Summa  boni  est 2  uncta  vixisse  patella. 
And  this  is  the  man  who  has  been  called  a  stoic  !  8 
But  the  day  of  retribution  came,  as  it  always  comes  to  the 
man  whose  god  is  his  belly.     The  abused  organ  revolts  and 
the  epicure  admits  (i,  47) :  — 

neque  enim  mihi  cornea  fibra  *  est. 

Accordingly  he  resolves  to  diet  himself  and  gives  orders 
to  his  cook  (5,  161)  : — 

Dave,  citOj  hoc  credos  iubeo,finire  dolor es 
praeteritos  meditor  crudus. 

It  is  clear  from  hoc  credas  iubeo  that  this  was  not  the 
first  time  that  he  had  so  resolved.  But  this  time,  says  he, 
/  mean  it.  In  the  second  of  these  verses  I  have  altered  the 

1  One  thinks  of  the  prophetic  utterance  of  Horace  (i,  38,  i)  :  — 
PERSICOS  odi,  puer,  apparatus. 

8  Interpunctionem  correxi. 

8  The  Classical  Department  actually  advertises  a  course  on  Seneca  and  Per- 
sius  as  Stoics  —  a  pretty  pair. 

4  It  is  obvious  to  the  investigator  that  fibra  is  here  to  be  taken  in  its  literal 
sense,  and  that  a  good  old-fashioned  East  Indian  liver  complaint  is  referred  to. 
The  scholiasts  and  commentators  of  course  try  to  explain  the  word  metaphori- 
cally, —  of  the  liver  as  the  seat  of  passion ! 


THE  REAL  PERSIUS  69 

punctuation  and  restored  crudus  in  its  proper  case.  The 
Mss.  and  vulg.  have 

*•  Praeteritos  meditor?  crudum  Chaerestratus  unguent 
abrodens  — 

which  is  nonsense.  Many  men  have  bitten  off  their  finger- 
nails, but  nobody  ever  cooked  his  finger-nails  before  eating 
them  away.  The  epithet  crudum  '  raw '  is  therefore  ab- 
surdly needless.  It  is,  in  fact,  an  epitheton  ornans,  and, 
as  the  learned  Professor  Gildersleeve  has  well  observed,1 
Persius  scarcely  ever  uses  epitheta  ornantia.  We  must 
therefore  restore  crudus  and  take  it  in  the  sense  of  before 
digestion,  a  sense  in  which  Persius  actually  uses  it  in  I,  51, 
crudiproceres.  It  is  then  evident  that  Persius  formed  his 
resolution,  like  many  other  gourmands,  immediately  after 
dinner.  In  pursuance  of  it,  he  gives  orders  for  the  prepa- 
ration of  a  frugal  meal,  and  that,  too,  though  a  holiday  is 
approaching  (6,  69) :  — 

Mihifesta  luce  coquatur 
urtica  et fissa  fumosum  sinciput  aure. 

He  gives  up  nuts,  for  in  every  age  they  have  been  recog- 
nized as  indigestible  (nucibus  relictis,  I,  10).  But  it  is 
all  too  late,  and  now  he  thinks  superstitiously  of  his  neg- 
lected gods,  —  those  awful  Etruscan  divinities  to  whom 
his  pious  mother,  Fulvia  Sisenna,  had  taught  him  to  pray. 
But  they  do  not  answer  his  prayer.  Alas!  he  sighs  (2, 
42):  — 

grandes  patinae  tuccetaque  crassa 
adnuere  his  super os  -uetuere, 

In  passing,  it  may  be  remarked  that  it  is  probable  that 

1  See  his  edition,  p.  74. 


^o  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

Persius  offered  these  prayers  himself ;  that  is,  he  did  not 
have  recourse  to  the  mediation  of  a  priest.  We  may  infer 
this  in  two  ways :  first,  in  the  same  Satire  he  inveighs 
against  the  venality  of  priests  (vs.  69) ;  secondly,  Persius 
had  clearly  had  enough  of  women,  and  it  is  well  known 
that  all  priests  in  Rome  were  women.  This  custom  was 
due  to  a  law  laid  down  at  an  early  period,  namely,  in  the 
famous  S.  C.  deBacch.,  where  we  read:  SACERDOS  •  NEQVIS  • 
VIR  •  ESSEX. 

And  so,  as  prayers  were  of  no  avail,  Persius  was  driven 
to  the  last  resource  of  the  ancients,  —  the  doctor.  As  a 
rule,  the  Romans  distrusted  physicians ;  hence  we  find  in 
Virgil  (Aeti.  12,  46)  the  significant  words,  aegrescit  me- 
dendo,  '  he  gets  sicker  as  the  cure  goes  on.'  But  Persius, 
in  spite  of  this  prejudice,  was  led  to  consult  one  because  he 
had  an  intimate  friend  in  the  profession,  as  we  know  from 
the  old  Vita,  where  we  read :  usus  est  apud  Cornutum  duo- 
rum  convictu  doctissimorum  et  sanctissimorum  vironim, 
acriter  tune  philosophantium,  Claudi  Agathurni  medici  Lace- 
daemonii  et  Petroni  Aristocratis  Magnetis. 

He  went  first  probably  to  Agathurnus  (for  the  other,  as 
we  shall  see,  was  not  a  regular  physician),  and  asked  for  a 
physical  examination  in  the  following  words  (3,  88) :  — 

Inspice,  nescio  quidtrepidat  mihi  pectus  et  aegris 
faucibus  exsuperat  gravis  halitus,  inspice  sodes. 

The  good  physician  prescribed  the  rest  cure1  (iussus 
requiescere,  3,  90),  and  Persius  followed  his  prescription  for 
two  days,  but  (3,  90)  :  — 

1  One  of  our  modern  medical  men  seems  to  lay  claim  to  this  as  his  dis- 
covery ! 


THE  REAL   PERSIUS  /I 

Postquam 

tertia  compositas  vidit  nox  currere  venas, 
de  motor e  domo 1  modice  sitiente  lagoena 
lenia  loturo  sibi  Surrentina  rogavit? 

The  result  of  the  debauch  that  ensued  was  of  course 
another  visit  to  the  doctor,  who  cried  out  at  once,  heus,  bone, 
tu  palles  !  (3,  94).  Persius  described  his  symptoms  again, 
and  perhaps  it  was  on  this  occasion  that  he  added  sum 
petulanti  splene  (i,  12),  and  lapidosa  cheragra  fecerit  articu- 
los  veteris  ramalia  fagi  (5,  58),  and  turgescit  vitrea  bills, 
findor  (3,  8).  Realizing  that  it  was  a  serious  case  indeed 
Agathurnus  looked  him  over  carefully  again,  and  gave  his 
verdict.  He  began  by  asking  Persius  to  feel  his  own  pulse 
and  to  take  his  own  temperature,  tange,  miser,  venas  et 
pone  in pectore  dextram  (3,  107).  He  next  showed  him  that 
his  skin  was  so  diseased  that  a  cry  of  pain  followed  the 
merest  touch  :  dicas  cute perditus  'ohe  / '  (i,  23).  His  bile, 
too,  was  disordered:  acri  bile  tumet  (2,  13;  cf.  3,  8),  and 
calido  sub  pectore  mascula  bilis  intumuit  (5,  144).  The 
patient  was  also  too  fat :  fibris  increvit  opimum  pingue  (3, 
32) ;  and  enormously  swollen  with  a  dropsy  :  pinguis  aquali- 
cus propenso  sesquipide  extet  (i,  57).  There  were  sores  in 
his  mouth  :  tenero  latetulcus  in  ore putre  (3,  113).  But  the 
real  trouble  lay  much  deeper,  and  the  friendly  doctor,  wish- 
ing to  spare  his  patient  a  shock,  broke  the  bad  news  grad- 
ually to  him.  He  began  in  a  philosophic  strain  (the  reader 
will  have  observed  the  \ffnsnpkUosopkantium  applied  to  him 
in  the  Vita),  crying  out  (4,  23) :  — 

1  Conington  absurdly  renders  'from  a  great  house ' ;  but  of  course  Per- 
sius merely  asked  his  major-domo  for  the  wine. 

2  Reading  rogavit  with  cod.  P,  rather  than  rogabis  of  a  and  Bucheler. 


-2  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

ut  nemo  in  sese  temptat  descenders,  nemo ! 

and,  gravely  shaking  his  head,  warned  Persius  not  to  seek 
for  the  trouble  outside:  nee  te  quaesiveris  extra  (i,  7); 
adding  ego  te  intus  et  in  cute  novi  (3,  30).  Then  coming 
closer  to  the  point,  he  said :  belle  hoc  excute  totum ;  quid 
non  intus  habet?  (i,  49).  Here  belle  is  to  be  interpreted 
as  meaning  '  belly.'  It  is  true  that  the  word  often  means 
'  bravo !'  but  when  we  compare  Gothic  balg-s,  Old  Irish 
bole,  bolg(saccus,  uter),  and  Gallic  bulque(sacculus\  there  is 
perhaps  no  doubt  that  we  have  in  this  passage  the  unique 
survival  in  literature  of  a  Latin  belle  in  the  sense  of  venter. 
It  was  probably  a  plebeian  term.  Everybody  knows  that 
Persius  preferred  the  verba  togae  to  the  more  polished 
language  of  the  day. 

Finally  the  doctor,  considering  that  he  had  sufficiently 
prepared  his  patient,  ended  his  diagnosis  with  the  fatal 
words,  ilia  subter  caecum  vulnus  habes  (4,  43).  After  this 
appalling  catalogue  of  diseases  the  thoroughly  unmanned 
poet  could  only  stammer  out  a  request  for  a  prescription 
or  method  of  cure.  But  the  doctor's  sad  answer  was  (3,  63) 

Elkborum  frustra  cum  iam  cutis  aegra  tumebit, 

which  we  can  interpret  only  as  meaning  that  his  skill  was 
of  no  avail  and  that  the  disease  was  mortal. 

It  is  possible  that  the  poet  was  not  satisfied  with  this 
single  verdict  and  that  he  consulted  another  physician. 
Coupled  with  the  name  of  Agathurnus,  we  saw  in  the  Vita 
that  of  another  friend  of  Persius  who  is  called  Petronius 
Aristocrates  Magnes.  It  can  hardly  be  without  a  reason 
that  this  man  is  culled  out  by  the  biographer  from  Persius's 
host  of  friends.  And  why  should  anybody  but  a  medical 


THE   REAL   PERSIUS  73 

man  be  named  in  the  same  breath  with  a  person  who  was 
certainly  of  that  despised  profession  ?  This  Petronius  was 
doubtless  a  physician,  and  to  the  careful  student  the  words 
of  the  text  show  it  clearly.  What  is  the  meaning  of 
Magnes  ?  The  commentators,  in  their  usual  invertebrate 
fashion,  explain  it  as  meaning  that  Petronius  was  a 
Magnesian  !  But  how  should  PERSIUS,  the  haughty  Etrus- 
can noble,  be  intimate  with  a  Magnesian  ?  It  is  all  but 
certain  that  we  have  here  no  trousered  Asiatic,  but  a  second 
physician,  an  eclectic,  in  short,  a  Magnetic  Healer !  We 
know  from  Pliny  (N.  H.  36,  130)  that  the  magnetic  treat- 
ment was  no  modern  invention,  but  one  familiar1  to  the 
ancients.  He  speaks  of  it  as  curing  among  others  a  dis- 
ease called  epiphorae.  Whether  it  was  ever  successfully 
applied  in  antiquity  to  a  case  like  that  of  Persius,  we  do  not 
know ;  but  we  may  be  sure  that  Petronius  would  leave  un- 
tried no  skill  for  the  sake  of  his  friend.2  We  have  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  his  efforts  were  successful. 

The  poet  therefore  was  convinced  that  he  was  doomed 
—  that  there  was  no  possible  cure  for  him  :  vetat  hoc  na- 
tura  medendi  (5,  101).  At  this  crisis  some  sparks  of  his 
ancestral  vigor  revived,  and  he  resolved  that,  if  he  must 
die,  his  death  should  be  noble.  He  shut  himself  up,  there- 
fore, and  began  to  write  his  legacy  to  posterity  (scribimns 
inclusi  grande  aliquid,  i,  13).  No  longer  does  he  write,  in 

1  Familiar,  else  Pliny  would  not  have  heard  of  it. 

2  It  may  be  interesting  here  to  note  that  the  Mss.  do  not  give  this  physi- 
cian's name  as  I  have  printed  it  above  (following  the  conjecture  of  Pithoeus). 
They  read  Petroni  aristotegratis  Afagnes.     The   second   name   is   obviously 
corrupt  ;  but  the  syllables  gratis  may  perhaps  belong  to  Magnes,  signifying 
that  this  healer  treated  his  patients  for  nothing,  in  contrast  to  the  fees  re- 
quired by  the  regular  school. 


74 


ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 


his  more  youthful  strain,  the  dramatic praetexta,  the  trivial 
hodoeporicon,  or  vers  de  socittt  like  his  skit  on  the  elder 
Arria.  All  these,  as  the  Vita  expressly  tells  us,  were  among 
his  earlier  works.  But  the  Satires  were  not  composed  until 
his  last  days.  This  accounts  for  the  moral  lessons  which 
they  contain.  They  are  real  sermons,  based  on  his  own 
sad  experience  of  the  vulgar  and  fatal  vices  of  gluttony  and 
libertinism  to  which  the  Romans  of  the  Empire  were  so 
given.  If  they  show  us  the  man  as  he  really  was,  in  his 
habit  as  he  lived,  they  may  be  said  to  form  one  of  the  most 
precious  and  curious  of  the  cryptogrammatic  biographies 
which  we  possess. 


REMARKS  ON  THE  WATER  SUPPLY  OF 
ANCIENT  ROME1 

THE  Commissioner  of  Water  Supply  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  in  his  report  for  the  year  1900,  remarked  that 
the  question  of  'public  water  supply  transcends  every 
other  subject  and  object  of  municipal  government  in  im- 
portance and  in  immediate  effect  on  every  human  being  of 
whatever  condition  of  life.'  Whether  the  Commissioner 
was  aware  that  he  was  merely  amplifying  the  Pindaric 
apicrrov  fiev  vSap  may  be  matter  for  doubt;  not  so  the  truth 
which  he  expressed,  for  with  it  everybody  will  agree. 
What  is  true  now  of  the  life  of  a  modern  municipality  in 
so  fundamental  a  concern  must  in  great  part  have  been 
true  of  the  life  of  an  ancient  municipality,  and  therefore  it 
behooves  all  students  of  ancient  Roman  life  to  consider 
what  can  be  learned  of  the  water  supply  of  ancient  Rome. 
Not  to  go  into  this  subject  in  details,  I  shall  at  present  con- 
fine myself  to  the  consideration  of  the  amount  of  public 
water  supply  available  in  Rome  down  to  the  end  of  the 
first  century  A.D. 

Our  authority  on  this  point  is  of  course  that  honest  and 
painstaking  official,  Frontinus,  who  became  water  commis- 
sioner in  the  year  97  A.D.,  and  who  was,  to  judge  from  his 
own  writings,  the  model  of  what  a  public  official  ought  to 

1  From  the    Transactions  of  the  American  Philological  Association,  1902, 
3°-37- 

75 


~g  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

be.  Justly,  therefore,  he  has  been  compared  to  the  late 
Colonel  Waring  by  Professor  Bennett,  in  a  recent  excursion 
from  the  somewhat  arid,  though  still,  I  think,  potential  plains 
of  syntax  into  the  definiteness  of  an  article  in  the  Atlantic. 
But  Professor  Bennett  is  not  the  only  American  who  has 
written  on  Frontinus.  Mr.  Clemens  Herschel,  a  well-known 
hydraulic  engineer,  published  two  years  ago  a  volume  in- 
valuable for  our  topic.  It  contains  a  facsimile  of  the  manu- 
script of  Frontinus  on  the  Aqueducts  of  Rome  (here 
published  for  the  first  time),  an  excellent  English  transla- 
tion, and  an  explanatory  commentary  written  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  modern  engineer.  Both  classical 
scholars  and  practical  engineers  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  to 
Mr.  Herschel,  who  is,  I  believe,  the  only  one  of  his  fraternity 
who  has  shown  during  the  last  hundred  years  an  intelligent 
interest  in  the  ancient  history  of  his  profession. 

In  the  course  of  his  book  Mr.  Herschel  endeavors  to 
make  a  conservative  estimate  of  the  amount  of  water  sup- 
plied daily  to  the  Romans  by  the  nine  aqueducts,  the  last 
of  which  was  completed  in  52  A.D.  It  would  indeed  be 
very  interesting  if  we  could  learn  this  amount,  so  that  we 
could  compare  the  water  supply  of  ancient  Rome  with 
that  of  our  own  great  cities.  But  unfortunately  it  is,  I 
think,  impossible  to  arrive  at  any  figures  which  shall  even 
approximate  to  exactness.  This  statement  is  entirely  at 
odds  with  those  which  are  to  be  found  in  modern  hand- 
books on  antiquities.  For  example,  in  Smith's  Dictionary  of 
Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities  (i,  p.  150)  we  are  told  that 
the  supply  amounted  to  332  million  gallons  a  day;  in 
Middleton's  Remains  of  Ancient  Rome  (ii,  p.  349),  to  about 
340  million ;  in  Lanciani's  Ruins  and  Excavations  of  Rome 


THE  WATER  SUPPLY  OF  ANCIENT  ROME  77 

(p.  58),  to  about  423  million ;  and  these  are  fair  samples 
of  the  figures  which  are  given  in  the  French  and  German 
books.  Now,  what  would  such  supplies  amount  to  per 
capita  (to  use  the  term  of  modern  water  reports)  of  the 
population  ?  We  cannot  be  certain  about  the  number  of 
inhabitants  of  ancient  Rome ;  but  if  we  accept  the  estimate 
of  a  million  for  the  time  of  Augustus,  we  should  have  from 
about  330  to  420  gallons  a  day  as  the  per  capita  rate  ;  or, 
if  we  suppose  that  the  population  had  grown  to  a  million 
and  a  half  by  Vespasian's  time,1  we  should  have  a  per 
capita  rate  of  from  220  to  280  gallons  a  day.  As  either  of 
these  estimates  gives  a  much  greater  allowance  than  that 
made  by  any  modern  system  of  water  supply,  the  books 
regularly  go  on  to  explain  that  this  large  allowance  was 
made  necessary  by  the  constantly  running  public  foun- 
tains, the  private  fountains,  the  great  public  pools  and  baths, 
the  provision  for  sham  naval  fights,  etc.  But  I  am  in- 
clined to  think,  on  a  priori  grounds,  that  the  requirements 
of  ancient  Rome  were  not  greater  than  those  of  a  modern 
metropolis —  perhaps  even  not  so  great.  Consider,  for  in- 
stance, our  hotels  and  apartment  houses,  great  and  small 
—  in  how  many  different  public  rooms,  including  lavatories 
and  latrinae,  is  water  constantly  running.  And  so  in  the 
great  business  blocks  and  public  buildings.  The  running 
water  in  all  these  is  to  be  compared  with  that  in  the  public 
fountains  of  Rome ;  for  our  public  fountains  are  still  com- 
paratively few,  although  the  number  is  larger  now  than 
formerly.  Consider  also  the  water  used  for  street  sprink- 
ling, for  mechanical  and  manufacturing  purposes,  by  rail- 

1  For  the  various  theories  and  estimates,  with  references  to  the  literature 
of  the  subject,  see  Friedlaender,  Sittengeschichte  Roms,  i6,  pp.  58-70. 


78  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

road,  gas,  and  electric  light  companies,  breweries  and 
sugar  refineries,  etc.  Many  new  industries  unknown  to 
Rome  are  gathered  in  our  cities,  and  the  old  industries  are 
still  going  on  under  higher  developments.  I  find,  there- 
fore, no  defense  in  the  supposed  larger  requirements  of 
ancient  Rome  for  the  enormous  per  capita  rate  which  the 
statements  in  the  handbooks  imply.  And  so  on  this  ground 
alone  I  should  doubt  these  statements. 

Mr.  Herschel  also  doubts  them,  but  on  other  grounds. 
He  points  out  that  they  must  necessarily  be  based  on  the 
figures  found  in  Frontinus,  who  gives  the  water  supply  of 
each  aqueduct  in  quinariae.  But  the  quinaria  is  a  variable 
unit  and  therefore  absolutely  unscientific.  It  shows  us 
nothing  about  the  volume,  for  it  is  merely  the  measure  of 
the  area  of  a  cross  section  of  water  in  a  pipe  of  a  certain 
arbitrary  size  (known  to  us,  but  not  necessary  to  specify 
here).  As  Mr.  Herschel  remarks,  the  volume  cannot  thus 
be  measured ;  for  it  depends  not  only  on  the  size  of  the 
pipe  but  on  the  velocity  of  the  current  moving  in  it ;  and 
this  in  turn  on  the  answer  to  the  question  whether  the  water 
is  discharged  into  free  air,  into  still  water,  or  into  flowing 
water.  It  depends  also  upon  the  "  head,"  that  is,  upon 
the  depth  of  the  basin  from  which  it  is  drawn,  and 
likewise  upon  the  length  of  the  pipe  itself  and  its  decliv- 
ity. Now  all  these  are  points  which  Frontinus  alto- 
gether ignores,  if  indeed  in  his  day  he  could  have  had 
any  but  the  vaguest  ideas  about  the  causes  and  effects 
of  the  velocity  of  a  stream  in  a  pipe.  And  further,  he 
uses  his  unit  quinaria  of  the  same  pipe  both  at  its  intake 
and  its  delivery,  although  the  velocity  was  presumably  not 
the  same  at  these  two  points.  Obviously  it  is  impos- 


THE  WATER  SUPPLY  OF  ANCIENT  ROME  79 

sible  to  reach  any  exact  figures  about  volume  from  such 
data  as  he  gives. 

Whence  come  then  the  figures  given  in  our  handbooks? 
They  appear  to  be  based,  as  Mr.  Herschel  remarks,  upon 
a  calculation  put  forth  very  cautiously  by  a  French  savant, 
De  Prony,  in  iSi/.1  He  tried  to  find  the  value  of  the 
quinaria  by  comparing  it  with  the  unit  employed  in  Rome 
in  his  own  day,  and  reached  the  conclusion  that  it  was 
about  56  cubic  metres,  or  15,000  gallons  (American)  in  24 
hours.  Now  as  the  total  number  of  quinariae  delivered 
every  day  by  the  nine  aqueducts  was,  according  to  Fron- 
tinus,  14,018,  this  would  give  about  200  million  gallons  as 
the  daily  supply  of  ancient  Rome.  But  De  Prony  deliber- 
ately based  his  estimate  on  two  assumptions :  first,  assum- 
ing that  the  head  acting  on  the  quinaria  was  equal  to  its 
length  ;  secondly,  assuming  that  the  quinaria  was  discharg- 
ing into  free  air.  But  neither  of  these  assumptions  have 
we  the  right  to  make  —  certainly  not  the  latter,  for  the 
quinariae  did  not  discharge  into  free  air,  but  out  of  the  de- 
livery tanks  into  the  pipes  that  ran  to  buildings,  fountains, 
etc.  Still,  De  Prony's  principle  has  been  adopted  and  his 
figures  in  details  amplified  until  we  get  in  our  books  the 
vast  number  which  I  have  cited. 

Observing  these  fallacies,  Mr.  Herschel  has  tried  to  get 
a  better  idea  of  the  amount  of  Roman  water  supply  from 
some  more  recent  investigations  made  by  Colonel  Blumen- 
stihl,  an  engineer.2  His  method  was  as  follows:  he 

1  Mem.  de  Vlnstitut:  Acad.  des  Sciences,  Math.,  et  Phys.,  ii,  p.  417. 

2  Brevi  Notizie  sulP  Acqua  Pia  :    1872.     Lanciani  himself  approved  the 
method  of  these  investigations  in  his  large  Italian  work  on  the  aqueducts,  / 
Commentarii  di  Frontino,  p.  362. 


g0  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

measured  the  actual  velocity  of  the  Aqua  Marcia  at  the 
present  time  at  a  point  near  its  intake,  and  found  it  to  be 
3j  feet  per  second.  At  about  this  point  Frontinus  says 
that  it  had  4690  quinariae.  The  proper  calculation  readily 
shows  that  a  quinaria  pipe  running  at  this  rate  per  second 
was  discharging  about  9250  gallons.  But  the  term  qui- 
naria was,  as  we  have  seen,  used  by  Frontinus  of  the  amount 
of  water  at  other  points  in  the  aqueduct,  —  at  its  point  of 
discharge,  for  instance.  The  term,  therefore,  was  employed 
of  water  flowing  with  less  velocity  —  for  example,  at  the 
rate  of  two  feet  or  even  of  one  foot  per  second.  In  other 
words,  as  Mr.  Herschel  remarks,  the  value  of  a  quinaria 
might  range  from  about  9000  gallons  in  24  hours  to  about 
2500  gallons.  Taking  a  liberal  average  (say  6000  gallons), 
he  calculates  that  the  total  of  14,018  quinariae  delivered 
daily  by  the  nine  aqueducts  may  have  amounted  to  about 
84  million  gallons  a  day.  And  this  amount  was,  according 
to  Mr.  Herschel,  the  maximum  of  Roman  water  supply. 
He  goes  on,  however,  to  observe  that,  according  to  Fron- 
tinus, a  good  deal  of  water  was  either  wasted  by  leakage 
along  the  route  or  diverted  by  being  drawn  off  illegally 
by  individuals  before  it  reached  the  distributing  points  in 
Rome.  But  the  figures  given  by  Frontinus  are  exclusive 
of  such  wastes  and  thefts.  This  is  a  fact  which  Mr.  Her- 
schel seems  not  to  have  observed  when  he  proceeds  to  re- 
duce his  84  million  gallons  by  more  than  one-half  in  order 
to  find  the  actual  supply  minus  these  thefts  and  leakages. 
If,  now,  we  accept  the  estimate  of  84  millions,  and  sup- 
pose that  this  supplied  a  million  people,  we  get  a  per 
capita  rate  of  84  gallons  a  day;  or  for  a  million  and  a 
half  of  people,  56  gallons  a  day.  It  must  be  remembered 


THE   WATER   SUPPLY   OF  ANCIENT   ROME 


8l 


that  this  estimate  is  almost  purely  conjectural,  for  it  de- 
pends only  upon  the  actually  measured  velocity  of  a  single 
aqueduct  near  its  point  of  intake.  Still,  it  is  obviously 
more  trustworthy  than  the  figures  which  we  find  in  our 
handbooks,  and  it  may  therefore  be  compared  with  the 
water  supplies  of  several  cities  in  the  United  States.  The 
figures  for  these  are  taken  from  reports  kindly  furnished 
to  me,  either  in  print  or  letter,  by  the  water  commis- 
sioners of  the  various  cities,  and  are  for  the  year  1901, 
except  in  the  case  of  Chicago,  which  is  for  1900.  They 
represent  actual  consumption,  not  possible  supply,  which 
could  not  be  given  in  all  cases.  The  figures  for  Rome 
represent  supply.  But  the  discrepancy  makes  no  differ- 
ence to  my  argument,  for  it  will  be  seen  that  in  all  but 
two  cases  the  per  capita  consumption  in  the  modern  cities 
is  greater  than  the  per  capita  supply  of  84  gallons  esti- 
mated for  Rome.  The  figures  are  as  follows  :  — 


CITY. 

AVERAGE  DAILY  CON- 
SUMPTION IN  GALLONS. 

PER  CAPITA  CONSUMP- 
TION IN  GALLONS. 

Cambridge     

7.  C  2O.Q76 

8o.7 

Borough  of  Brooklyn,  N.Y.  .     . 
Baltimore  

97,OOO,OOO 
56,000,000 

83 
IOO 

Boston  

IOI.dQ2.OOO 

1  2O 

Boroughs   of   Manhattan    and 
The  Bronx,  N.Y  
Chicago     

275,000,000 
^22.(;QQ.63O 

134 

161 

Philadelphia  

27O.Q7C.4.C3 

21  1.  Q 

From  these  figures  we  see  that  in  the  city  of  Cam- 
bridge l  and  the  borough  of  Brooklyn  the  per  capita  con- 

1  With  a  population  of  93,000  —  the  only  city  on  the  list  having  less  than 
half  a  million  people. 


82  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

sumption  is  less  than  the  84  gallons  of  supply  estimated 
for  Rome.  In  passing  we  observe  that  Brooklyn,  with  a 
population  of  1,166,000  (or  about  that  which  is  generally 
estimated  for  Rome),  has  a  consumption 1  almost  exactly 
equal  to  Mr.  Herschel's  estimate  of  the  Roman  supply. 
We  note  further  that  the  consumption  of  Boston  is  nearly 
one  half  as  much  again  as  the  supply  of  Rome ;  the  con- 
sumption of  the  boroughs  of  Manhattan  and  The  Bronx  is 
more  than  half  as  much  again ;  the  consumption  of  Chicago 
is  nearly  twice  as  great ;  and  finally  the  consumption  of 
Philadelphia  is  more  than  two  and  a  half  times  the  supply 
of  Rome.  If  the  population  of  Rome  is  taken  at  a  million 
and  a  half,  the  excess  of  per  capita  rate  in  favor  of  modern 
cities  will  be  vastly  greater.  Now  the  result  of  these  com- 
parisons is  just  what  I  should,  on  my  a  priori  grounds,  have 
expected  to  reach ;  namely,  that  the  water  supply  of  ancient 
Rome  was  not  so  great  as  that  which  a  large  city  in  modern 
times  requires. 

We  must  not  forget,  however,  that  this  conclusion  is 
based  upon  conjectures  about  the  amount  of  supply  and 
the  number  of  inhabitants  of  Rome.  But  it  may  also  be 
reached,  I  believe,  without  any  conjecture  at  all  in  an  en- 
tirely different  manner ;  that  is,  by  showing  that  the  pub- 
lic water  supply  in  modern  cities  has  increased  from  time 
to  time  in  greater  proportion  than  the  supply  of  Rome 
increased.  I  have  drawn  up  from  Frontinus  a  table 
which  shows  the  comparative  increase  of  Roman  water 
supply  with  the  building  of  the  different  aqueducts. 
Necessarily  it  is  expressed  in  quinariae,  but  this  does  not 

1  The  water  commissioner,  however,  reports  that  the  available  supply  is 
wholly  inadequate  to  the  demand. 


THE   WATER   SUPPLY   OF  ANCIENT   ROME 


affect  my  purpose.     The  table   gives   also  the   dates  at 
which  the  aqueducts  were  built. 


AQUEDUCT. 

DATB. 

SUPPLY  IN 

quinariat. 

TOTAL  SUPPLY. 

Appia  

•312  B.C. 

7O4 

7O4 

Anio  Vetus  

272-269 
1  44-1  4O 

1610 
IQT; 

23H 
424Q 

Tepula      

I2C 

445 

46Q4 

44 

803 

C4Q7 

Vin?o   . 

TQ 

2CO4 

8OOI 

Alsietina  ...... 

Augustan 

•3Q2 

8-3.ni. 

Claudia     

38—52  A.D. 

28l2  1 

I  I.2Oi; 

Anio  Novus  

•38-1:2  A.D. 

28l  ^1 

1  4.0l8 

From  this  table  it  appears  that  it  had  not  been  found 
necessary  to  double  the  supply  between  the  time  of 
Cicero,  who  died  in  43  B.C.,  and  the  completion  of  the 
Claudian  and  New  Anio  aqueducts  in  52  A.D.,  a  period  of 
95  years,  including  the  Augustan  age  with  all  its  grandeur 
and  development.  After  the  building  of  these  two  aque- 
ducts it  was  almost  tripled.  But  take  the  city  of  New 
York.  The  consumption  in  1860  was  54  million  gallons; 
in  1900,  after  a  period  of  only  40  years,  it  had  become  255 
million,  or  4.7  times  as  much.  I  am  careful  here  to  com- 
pare only  the  present  borough  of  Manhattan  with  what 
was  the  old  city  of  New  York.  In  the  same  period  the 
per  capita  consumption  has  doubled.  The  year  1860  is 
the  earliest  for  which  figures  could  be  furnished  to  me 
by  the  New  York  Commissioner  of  Water  Supply.  For 

1  We  know  the  amount  supplied  by  these  two  aqueducts  together,  but  not 
by  each  singly. 


84  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Boston  we  can  go  back  farther,  and  it  appears  that  since 
1850,  in  the  period  of  51  years,  the  per  capita  consump- 
tion has  increased  nearly  2.9  times  (from  42  gallons  to 
120).  In  Baltimore  and  Philadelphia,  in  the  50  years 
from  1852  to  1902,  the  per  capita  consumption  has  in- 
creased 7.1  and  6.3  times  respectively  (from  14  to  100 
gallons,  and  from  33 T8^  to  211.9  gallons).  Chicago  (but 
this  is  of  course  a  most  peculiar  case)  had  in  1854  a  per 
capita  consumption  of  8.9  gallons,  which  had  risen  in 
1900  to  161  gallons.  During  the  last  thirty  years  it  has 
increased  2.2  times. 

It  appears,  therefore,  that  we  cannot  trust  our  books  on 
antiquities,  and  that  until  other  evidence  is  produced  we 
should  believe  that  the  Roman  uses  for  water,  and  conse- 
quently the  water  supply,  were  less  than  those  of  a  modern 
metropolis. 


2KHNAQ,  2KHNGQ,  SKriNOQ 
A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY  1 

THE  verbs  o-Kijvda),  a-Krjveo),  o-tcrjvoQ)  have  never,  to  my 
knowledge,  been  fully  examined.  In  this  article  it  is 
proposed  (i)  to  collect  all  the  forms  which  occur,  both  of 
the  simple  verbs  and  of  their  compounds ;  (2)  to  assign 
each  form  to  its  proper  present;  (3)  to  discuss  the 
meanings. 

The  collection  of  forms  discloses  an  interesting  fact. 
The  words  are  confined  to  a  few  authors,  and  of  69  forms 
which  occur  in  classical  Greek,  there  are  59  in  Xenophon. 
The  other  classical  authors  who  use  these  words  are 
Aeschylus  (once),  Aristophanes  (once),  Thucydides  (three 
times  in  the  Mss.,  but  probably  really  twice),  Demosthe- 
nes (once),  Plato  (four  times).  The  words  are  not  found 
in  Homer,  Hesiod,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  Aristotle,  or  in 
the  orators,  except  in  the  single  passage  of  Demosthenes.2 
In  late  authors,  lexicographers  and  grammarians,  I  find 
44  additional  forms,  as  well  as  two  others  in  inscriptions, 
a  total  of  1 1 5  forms  in  all. 

The  assignment  of  the  different  forms  to  their  proper 
presents  is  no  easy  task.  One  difficulty  arises  from  the 

1From  the  American  Journal  of  Philology,  1892,  xiv,  71-84;   ibid.  p.  382. 

2  These  statements  are  based  upon  the  special  lexicons  to  Homer  and  the 
tragedians,  Dunbar's  Concordance  to  Aristophanes,  Essen's  Index  to  Thu- 
cydides, Paulsen's  to  Hesiod,  the  Index  Graecitatis  in  Reiske's  Orators,  Ast's 
Lexicon  Platonicum,  the  Index  to  the  Berlin  Aristotle,  Keller's  Index  to  the 
Hellenica,  and  on  my  own  examination  of  the  other  works  of  Xenophon. 

85 


86  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

uncertainty  of  origin  attaching  to  the  contracted  forms. 
In  fact,  when  they  are  considered  as  mere  forms,  the  only 
one  in  the  authors  which  necessarily  presupposes  a  cncijvdm 
is  <ricr)va(T0ai  ;  there  is  no  form  in  itself  calling  for  a-tcrjvem  ; 
from  OTCTJI/OO),  however,  are  formed  a-Krjvovv,  eo-Kijvov  (3d  per- 
son impf.  act.),  o-tcyvoHra),  -ea-Krjvma-e,  eaKrjvma'av, 
(TKT]vd><ra<i,  -e<Ttcr)v<bfcaT€,  -evKrjvcoKevai,  -€(rfcr)VQ)Ket, 
w>9,  -wnjvoQtyxu.  But  the  following  might  be  formed 
from  either  -da  or  -em:  tnajv^ffown,  crfCTjvrjcreiv,  (nciyvrjcroiev, 
ea-K^vrja-av,  o-tcrjvijo-dfAevos,  eo-fcrjvr)Tai,  etc.;  the  following 
from  -4a>  or  -dm  :  o-Krjvov/Aev,  <ncr)vov<ri,  o-Krjvovvres,  e<ricijvovv; 
and  from  either  -da>,  em  or  dm  the  subjv.  -a-Krjvwa-i. 

Observing  that  no  form  calls  necessarily  for  a-Kijveco,  one 
might  be  inclined  to  say  that  there  is  no  such  word.  Still, 
Thomas  Magister  recognizes  it  in  the  following  passage 
(337,  1  8  Ritschl):  — 

Kal  (TKrjvr)  Kal  (ncr/voipa  Trapa  rg  deia  ypcufrfj  •  ol  prfrope; 
Be  a-Ktjvrjv  pdvov  ypdfovaLv.  /cal  a-fcrjvdco  a-tcrjvS)  fwvov  Trap" 
eKeivrj  •  Trapa  Se  royrot?  (rtcrjveco  o-Krjvm  ws  eTri7ro\v,  aTraf  Be 
teal  crKrjvdo)  O-KTJVW.  'A/oto-retS?;?  ev  ©e/Juo-ro/cXei  '  Trap  avrov 
rov  ddvarov  e<rKrjvija-0at  '  Kal  TTCL\IV  •  opov  rot?  vavTais  ec 


And  the  Scholiast  (Rav.)  on  Ar.  Ach.  6g  recognizes 
three  verbs  (see  below,  p.  92).  Further,  it  would  be 
extraordinary  if  there  were  formations  in  -dm  and  -dm,  yet 
none  in  -em,  for  verbs  of  this  last  form  are,  certainly  so  far 
as  Xenophon  is  concerned,  far  more  common  than  those  of 
the  first  two.  Thus,  a  count  of  these  verbs  in  the  Anaba- 
sis (including  compounds)  shows  87  in  -dm,  26  in  -dm,  and 
247  in  -4m.  Excluding  compounds,  the  figures  respectively 
are  41,  18  and  125. 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY        87 

That  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing  the  forms  was  rec- 
ognized early,  Eustathius  indirectly  testifies  (//.  a,  p.  70)  : 
teal  TO  <ricr)va>  Se  ove^woo-a),  ef  o£  Kal  (ncrjvcDfjia,  Kal  TO  <r/ci)v£> 
a-Krjv^aw,  ct(f>  oi>  ot  crtcrjvijTai,  Siafopav  e^ova-iv  fyavepdv.  It 
is  evident  that  we  must  inquire  into  the  distinction  of 
meaning  among  the  different  presents  before  attempting 
to  assign  the  doubtful  forms  to  their  proper  verbs. 

As  the  verbs  are  denominatives,  a  consideration  of  the 
substantives  formed  from  the  same  root  may  be  useful. 
The  chief  is  cr/cijvij.  This  word  means  literally  no  more 
than  a  shelter.  It  denotes  in  usage  something  temporary, 
as  a  hut,  booth,  or  tent,  but  these  not  necessarily  intended 
for  soldiers.  The  same  may  be  said  of  07071/05,  a-Kijvco^a, 
cf.  Karao-KrivaHns,  etc.  Of  course  the  words  are  common 
enough  in  the  sense  of  a  soldier's  tent.  But  we  find  them 
also  applied  to  shops  and  public  inns  (Becker-Goll,  Chari- 
kles,  ii,  196),  to  temporary  dwellings  for  new  settlers  pro- 
vided by  the  old  inhabitants  of  a  town  (C.  I.  G.  3137, 
B.  57  =  Ditt.  Syll.  171,  57),  to  the  theatre  building  (Ar. 
Pac.  731,  Xen.  Cyr.  6,  i,  54).  But  above  all  other  civil 
uses,  the  o-icrjvtf,  a-Kijvot,  or  a-K^vcofjua  was  most  frequently 
employed  at  religious  festivals  and  general  assemblies, 
including  the  great  games,  in  fact  at  every  Travrfyvpis. 
The  case  is  stated  in  a  nutshell  by  Foucart  (sur  Lebas, 
Voyage  Archtol.  i,  p.  170):  — 

'  Les  lois  religieuses  des  Grecs  ne  permettaient  pas 
d'61ever  des  habitations  permanentes  dans  les  enceintes 
sacrees.  Du  reste  elles  auraient  et6  insuffisantes  pour  la 
foule  que  les  solennit^s  attiraient.  Tout  le  monde  cam- 
paient? 

This  is  not  the  moment  to  enlarge  upon  the  ancient 


88  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

'camp  meeting.'  It  is  enough  for  the  present  purpose  to 
say  that  it  was  a  familiar  idea  to  the  Greeks.1 

One  more  substantive  formed  from  the  root  ovea  must  be 
considered,  because  in  Xenophon  it  has  a  peculiar  mean- 
ing. This  is  avcrKTjvia.  Its  proper  meaning  is  of  course 
a  dwelling  in  the  same  tent,  and  the  corresponding  word 
avcricrivos  would  mean  tent-companion  (Thuc.  7,  75,  4).  But 
in  Xenophon  a-va-Krjvia  frequently  means  a  feeding  together. 
Trieber,  in  his  Forschungen  zur  spartanischen  Verfassungs- 
geschichte,  p.  2 1  ff .,  has  shown  how  this  came  about.  The 
words  o-va-a-iTiov  and  cnWiTo?  are  ordinarily  employed  in 
this  second  sense.  But  Trieber  points  out  (p.  15)  that 
o-vo-criTiov  in  Sparta  was  the  name  of  a  small  division  of 
the  troops,  and  that  hence  Xenophon,  in  his  Lacedaemo- 
nian State,  cannot  use  it  to  signify  a  feeding  together,  and 
substitutes  for  it  o-vaKrjvta,  and  for  o-vo-airos  uses  o-vcncrjvos. 
Trieber  adds  that  Hippodamus  (ap.  Stob.  Flor.  43,  93)  used 
<ruaricavia<;  in  the  same  Xenophontic  sense. 

Now  of  the  different  uses  of  the  substantives  formed 
from  the  root  oca,  three  will  be  found  of  value  in  estab- 
lishing the  meanings  of  the  verbs  —  ( I )  the  military  ; 
(2)  the  religious ;  (3)  the  feeding  sense,  as  found  in  Xeno- 
phon. These  differences  have  been  ignored  by  lexicogra- 

1  The  following  list  of  citations  proves  this  clearly.  It  is  given  here  as  a 
contribution  to  the  subject,  in  the  belief  that  the  passages  have  not  before 
been  so  fully  collected :  — 

Ar.  Thesm.  624  and  schol. ;  658;  Pac.  879  and  schol.,  [Andoc.  33,  9] 
Xen.  Hellen.  5,  3,  19;  7,  4,  32  (cf.  28) ;  Paus,  10,  32,  9  ;  Plut.  Ale.  12  ;  Luc. 
Amor.  12;  C  I.  G.  1625;  3069,  30;  3071;  Ditt.  Syll.  189,  n  ;  125,  28; 
362,2;  388,34.  See  also  Becker-Goll,  Chariklts,  ii,  p.  196.  For  ffKijvownyla 
applied  to  the  Jewish  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  C.  I.  G.  5361.  In  this  list  refer- 
ences are  given  to  substantives  and  adjectives  and  not  to  the  verbs 
etc.,  as  they  will  be  treated  below. 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY        89 

phers.  Of  the  verbs  themselves  Curtius  (Das  Verbum,  i2, 
p.  358)  says  only  this:  ' alle  drei  gut  attisch,  okne  be- 
stimmte  Gebrauchsverschiedenheit?  In  Liddell  and  Scott's 
lexicon  we  find :  '  the  proper  difference  of  a-Krjveo)  (or  -ewo) 
and  (TKijvoa)  is,  that  the  former  signifies  to  be  in  tents,  be 
encamped ;  the  latter,  to  set  up  tents,  encamp;  though  this 
is  not  strictly  observed.'  This  is  the  ordinary  distinction 
found  in  the  older  general  and  in  the  special  lexicons. 
But  in  practice  the  makers  of  the  dictionary  seem  to  have 
abandoned  the  distinction  altogether,  and  the  result  is 
chaotic,  especially  in  the  treatment  of  the  compounds. 
Vanicek  (p.  1055)  says:  'O-KIJVIJ  .  .  .  o-Kijvdto,  in  einem  Zelt 
u.  s.  w.  wohnen,  sich  aufhalten,  niederlassen ;  (*<r«»/w>9) 
oa),  ein  Zelt  u.  s.  w.  errichten,  =  a-Kijvdco ;  omp^trjiw,  = 
These  are  all  the  general  remarks  upon  the 
verbs  which  I  have  seen. 

What  Curtius  says  (ibid.,  p.  355)  about  the  interchange 
and  the  meaning  of  verbs  in  -dot,  -ea>,  and  -o'a>  shows  how 
difficult  and  how  often  impossible  it  is  to  learn  the  mean- 
ings of  the  different  kinds  by  having  recourse  to  etymo- 
logical formulae.  But  in  speaking  of  verbs  in  -da  he  says 
that  they  come  from  noun-stems  in  a,  and  get  their  mean- 
ings from  these  nouns,  generally  denoting  the  exercise  of 
some  activity  or  the  existence  of  some  state.  Taking 
a-KTivao-dai,  the  only  form  which  necessarily  presupposes  a 
verb  in  -aw,  we  might  say  that  it  comes  from  cncrjvdo), 
meaning  to  tent,  to  encamp  (cf .  a-fav&ovdo),  to  sling,  apia-rdat, 
to  breakfast,  reXevrdo),  to  end).  If  we  found  no  active 
form  we  might  say  that  in  this  verb  the  active  was  never  or 
only  rarely  used,  and  might  compare  fiaf^avdofuu^  a-raB^da*, 
If  we  found  active  forms  we  might  say  that  both 


9O  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

active  and  middle  or  passive  were  used  in  the  same  sense, 
and  might  compare  >ireipda>.  In  this  case  we  should  have 
the  right  to  say  that  the  doubtful  forms  a-Kijvija-a},  ea-K^vr)- 
a-av,  etc.,  might  be  from  a-tcrjvda)  as  well  as  from  a-Krjveco.  If, 
however,  we  examined  the  passages  in  which  the  doubtful 
middle  or  passive  forms  occurred  and  found  that  in  all,  or 
practically  all,  there  was  a  peculiar  meaning,  and  that  this 
was  not  the  military  meaning  found  in  the  substantives, 
but  the  religious,  and  that  the  reverse  was  the  case  with 
the  doubtful  active  forms,  we  might  be  inclined  to  say  that 
we  were  dealing  with  two  distinct  verbs,  one  in  -da>,  the 
other  in  -e&>,  and  that  these  verbs  were  carefully  distin- 
guished in  usage.  For  instance,  cf.  Thuc.  I,  89,  3,  ev  at? 
avrol  e<rtcljvr)(rav  (military),  and  2,  52,  3,  ev  ot?  eo-/cijvr)VTO 
(religious),  passages  to  be  considered  more  fully  below. 
Now  it  will  appear  that  this  difference  actually  did  exist. 
Abandoning,  therefore,  the  previous  line,  I  approach 
a-Krjvdw  from  a  different  point.  The  active  Ooivdco  is  transi- 
tive and  means  to  feast,  to  entertain,  the  middle  and  passive 
intransitive,  meaning  to  feast,  to  banquet ;  so  evvdco,  to  put 
to  bed,  mid.  and  pass.,  to  lie  abed ;  cf.  Biairdm, 
(cf.  Rutherford,  Phrynichus,  p.  188),  xcotftao), 
So  if  we  had  a  aicrjvdco  from  a-fcrjv^,  a  shelter,  it  might  mean 
to  put  in  shelter,  mid.  and  pass.,  put  oneself  or  be  put  in 
shelter,  tent,  camp  out,  take  up  one's  abode.  Now,  these 
are  the  meanings  which  we  actually  find  with  all  the 
middle  or  passive  forms,  but  confined  to  the  civil,  and 
practically  to  the  '  camp  meeting '  sense.  The  present  of 
the  verb,  as  found  in  the  authors,  never  means  to  be  in 
camp,  or  to  dwell,  as  Liddell  and  Scott  and  Vanicek  say. 
Turning  to  the  authors,  we  find  the  compound 


A   CONTRIBUTION  TO   LEXICOGRAPHY  91 


in  Plat.  Rep.  614  E,  ra?  -^ri^a?  .  .  .  ao-ytteW?  et'<?  TOV 
a-Tuovtra?  olov  eV  Travijyvpei  KaraarKijvaa-Bai,  where 
the  meaning  is  that  Er  saw  the  souls  camp  out  as  people 
do  at  a  festival.  Here  we  have  the  verb  in  what  I  have 
called  the  religious  meaning.  A  little  further  along  (62  1  A) 
we  find  Er  saying  of  the  souls  in  the  plain  of  Lethe  that 
he  saw  a'Krjvdo'Bai,  ovv  ox^a?  tfSrj  eerTre/aa?  yiyvo/Aevrjs  Trapa 
rbv  'A/^eXT/ra  irora^ov.  The  same  idea  is  plainly  to  be 
understood.  Now,  there  are  seven  other  passages  in  the 
authors  in  which  middle  or  passive  forms  are  found,  all  of 
which  may  come  from  a-Krjvdofjiai.  In  the  order  of  tenses 
first  comes  oTCT/mjo-a/Aeix)?,  PI.  Legg.  866  D.  Here  the 
homicide,  if  cast  ashore  on  the  coast  of  the  country  from 
which  he  has  been  exiled,  is  directed  to  watch  for  a  ship, 
a-Krjvyo-dfjifVOS  ev  daXdrrrj  reyyow  TOU?  Tro'Sa?.  This  is 
generally  rendered  'having  taken  up  his  abode  on  the 
shore,'  etc.  Evidently  there  is  no  military  sense  here; 
the  thought  is  merely  of  a  temporary  shelter,  and  the 
word  is  as  likely  to  be  chosen  from  the  use  of  the  a-icrjvr)  at 
festivals  as  from  its  employment  in  military  camps.  The 
same  participle  occurs  in  the  manuscripts  of  Thuc.  I, 
133.  i>  where  the  spy  on  Pausanias  is  spoken  of  as  a-icrjvr)- 
crafjievov  8nr\f)V  Sia^pdy/jLari,  Ka\v/3r)V  ;  this  is  rendered 
'  having  prepared  for  shelter  a  hut  divided  by  a  partition.' 
This  passage  has  frequently  been  suspected  on  the  ground 
that  the  verb  (variously  called  by  editors  a-Kr)vei<r8ai  or 
o-icrjvao-Oai}  is  elsewhere  intransitive.  Even  if  it  were 
transitive,  we  have  seen  that  it  would  not  be  so  in  the 
sense  required  here,  and  some  correction  of  the  text,  like 
Madvig's  cncevaa-apevov,  must  be  adopted.  In  the  Republic 
again  (610  E)  we  find  a  form,  the  perfect,  and  in  the 


g2  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

neighborhood  of  the  passages  already  quoted.  Of  injus- 
tice it  is  said,  ovrco  rroppa)  TTOU,  w?  eoi/cev,  ecncrjvrjrai  rov 
0avd<ripos  elvai.  Here,  too,  there  is  no  military  reference 
any  more  than  before ;  the  word  means  dwells,  as  in  Aris- 
tides below.  We  come  next  to  two  passages  in  a  late 
author,  Aristides.  One  of  them  is  referred  to  by  Thomas 
Magister  in  the  place  quoted  above  (p.  86) ;  in  the  other 
the  same  form  ea-K-rjvrjcrBat  appears.  In  the  first  (ii,  p.  246 
Dind.)  a  man  is  said  Trap'  avrbv  rov  Bdvarov  ec 
in  the  second  (ii,  p.  581)  the  words  are  ot>8'  avrat  '( 
jjpKei  rrapa  T<*9  o^Oa?  €cncr)vijcrBai  rov  rrarpos.  Neither  of 
them  necessarily  supposes  a  military  use  of  the  word, 
although  the  first  certainly  looks  in  that  direction.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  Thomas  Magister  (see  above,  p.  86) 
took  this  form  from  (ncrjveco.  It  is  perhaps  rather  hard  on 
him  to  use  his  words  towards  proving  the  existence  of  a 
o-Krjve'co  and  then  to  suggest  that  he  was  wrong  in  taking 
this  particular  form  from  that  verb.  Still,  we  shall  find 
that  the  real  crtcrjveco  is  active  and  intransitive,  and  is  con- 
fined to  the  military  sense.  In  Aristides  the  verbs,  here 
perfect,  not  present,  mean  no  more  than  to  dwell  (cf.  the 
perf.  eV/e7?w»/AeVo9,  below,  p.  98),  the  present  meaning  take 
up  one's  dwelling. 

Next  is  the  form  ea-Kijvrjfjulvoi  in  Aristophanes  (Ach.  69). 
The  scholiast  here  says  :  /ee/eXmu  TO  pfj/jia  arro  T^9  rrpcor^ 
r&v  Trepicnrconevcov.  el  yap  fy  arro  7^9  rptrrj^  fy  av  8ia 
rov  co,  a)?  Kexpvcrcopevoi.1  That  is,  he  appears  to  take  the 
form  to  be  from  -dco.  It  is  passive,  and  means  sheltered, 
screened,  the  reference  being  to  the  covered  carriages  used 

1  The  form  in  -6w  was  the  commonest  of  the  three  in  usage  (see  p.  103) ; 
hence  this  warning  scholion.. 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY  93 

in  Persia.  Blaydes  compares  O-KIJV^  in  Aesch.  Pers.  1000; 
Plut.  Them.  26. 

The  pluperfect  occurs  in  Thuc.  2,  52,  3,  ra  re  lepck  ev  ofc 
eaKijvijvro  veicpwv  TrXe'a  771^.  Here  (and  in  2,  17,  I1)  the 
meaning  is  not  that  persons  were  quartered  actually  in 
the  temple  buildings,  but  lepd  means  the  sacred  precincts 
about  the  temples,  in  which  people  actually  camped  out  at 
festivals,  and  ea-K^vrjvro  is  used  in  the  religious  sense  (cf.  I, 
89,  3,  where  ea-Kijvija-av  is  used  in  the  military  sense). 

This  completes  my  collection  of  middle  and  passive 
forms,  and  it  appears  that  Liddell  and  Scott  were  right  in 
referring  them  all  to  -ao),  but  not  exact  in  the  meaning 
assigned  to  the  present.  It  will  be  observed  that  not 
one  of  them  necessarily  suggests  the  military  meaning  of 
07071/77.  In  Hesychius,  however,  we  find  in  Schmidt's 
editions  o-Krjv&jnet  •  tnfarmpoi.  \eyovrcu  Be  xal  a-Krjvanat. 
We  have  seen  that  the  active  of  a-Kijvdo)  might  be  transi- 
tive ;  here  it  appears  to  be  intransitive.  But  the  manu- 
script has  a-Krjvovref,  and  Schmidt  followed  Musurus  in 
reading  a-Krjvwvrei.  Now,  the  form  o-Kijvovres  may  be 
Doric  for  <TKI]VOVVT€S  (from  -eo>),  (cf.  Kpardvres,  Koa-fjLovre;, 
Blass-Kiihner,  Ausf.  Gram.,  p.  202);  or,  if  we  read  <TKT)- 
p&We?,  this  also  may  be  Doric  for  o-Krjvovvr&i,  from  -ea>  or 
-6w  (ibid.,  p.  205).  We  are  therefore  dealing  here  with  a 
dialectic  form  of  -&>  or  -oco,  and  not  with  -o&>  at  all. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  of  the  ten  classical  occurrences 
of  the  verbs  outside  of  Xenophon,  seven  have  already  been 
treated.  I  shall  next  examine  O-KIJVOO).  Of  verbs  in  -oo>, 
Curtius  (ibid.}  says  that  in  the  majority  of  cases  they  are 


1  ol  df  iroXXol  rd  rt  tpTjfJM  TTJS  T6Xews  $Ki)(rav  na.1  ri  ZepA  Kol  rit   r;pfa 
,  KT\. 


94  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

formed  from  adjectival  o-stems,  and  that  they  have  a 
causative  or  factitative  meaning,  so  that  we  can  translate 
them  to  make  something.  With  this  class  we  are  evi- 
dently not  dealing  now.  He  adds,  '  along  with  these  go 
others  which  come  from  substantives,  and  have  a  similar 
meaning,  that  of  bring  about  something,  provide  with  some- 
thing, e.g.  ffTefavda.'  On  this  principle  a-Krjvom  should  be 
formed  from  a-Krjvof  and  be  transitive,  meaning  provide 
with  a  shelter,  make  tent,  put  into  camp.  I  find  only  one 
trace  of  this  causative  sense,  and  that  in  Plutarch,  paKpav 
cnreaK'qvwKei  ra  &ra  r&v  povv&v,  2,  p.  334  B.  But  in  its 
ordinary  usage  the  verb  is  not  causative.  Rutherford 
(Babrius,  p.  25)  speaks  of  this  and  compares  ISpow,  piydw, 
and  ftfio-oo).  Even  the  causative  VTTVOW  has  sometimes  an 
intr.  meaning ;  cf.  also  o/iotow,  Trpoo-opoioo),  e^iadco,  tcarop- 
06o>,  %77/3oo>.  Among  other  verbs  in  -o&>,  KVK\6co  is  not 
causative.  Another,  fiiou,  is  not  causative,  and  it  is  very 
often  found  with  the  cognate  ace.  fttov.  Somewhat  like 
this  is  the  well-known  place  in  Aesch.  Bum.  634,  <j)dpo<; 
Trepea-K^voxrev  (cod.  M)  or  Trapea-Ki^vwa-ev  (dett).  This  is 
the  only  passage  in  classical  Greek  in  which  the  verb  in 
-oft)  has  an  accusative.  In  all  the  other  passages  it  is 
intransitive,  and  we  shall  find  that  it  properly  means  to 
tent,  camp,  camp  out,  pitch  one's  tent,  and  encamp,  the 
general  meaning  ascribed  to  it  by  Liddell  and  Scott. 

In  the  classic  authors  the  only  forms  which  necessarily 
imply  a  a-Krjvow  are  a-/cr)vovv  and  -(ncyvovv,  ea-Kijvov,  -ecricr)- 
vcoa-ev,  imcj/HMrav,  -evKTjvwKare.  These  forms  (omitting  the 
Aeschylus  passage)  occur  16  times.  In  twelve  of  them 
the  verb  has  the  meaning  encamp  or  go  into  quarters,  in 
the  military  sense,  as  follows  :  axr^vovv  and  -aKTjvovv,  Xen 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY  95 

A.  4,  4,  10 ;  5,  23  ;  5,  7,  31 ;  Cyr.  2,  i,  25  ;  8,  5, 3 ;  Hellen. 
7,  i,  38;  ecncrjvov,  A.  7,  4,  II  ;  Hellen.  5,  4,  56;  -eo-KijvQ)- 
a-ev,  A.  2,  2,  16;  Cyr.  4,  5,  39;  ea-Kr/vcoa-av,  Dem.  54,  3; 
-ea-KtjvcaKare,  Cyr.  6,  2,  2.  In  one  place  it  has  primarily  the 
same  meaning,  but  Xenophon  would  probably  not  have 
used  the  word  here  were  it  not  for  the  idea  of  feeding 
which  we  have  seen  that  he  attached  to  the  substantive 
This  is  in  the  Cyr.  6,  I,  49,  Kal  vvv  pev  tre 
,  e(f>rj,  crvv  rrj  jvvaiKi  Senrveiv,  avOis  8e  Kal  Trap*  e/zot 
o-e  a-Krjvovv  crvv  rot?  0-045  re  Kal  e/iot?  <f>i\oi<i.  Here 
and  O-KTJVOVV  are  practically  synonyms.  In  the 
other  three  of  the  sixteen  passages  the  verb  has  not  what 
Liddell  and  Scott  call  its  proper  meaning.  In  these  it 
denotes  not  an  activity  but  a  state  of  being.  That  is,  it 
has  a  meaning  which,  on  Curtius's  principle,  we  might 
have  expected  to  find  with  cnaptfat,  but  did  not,  and  which 
is  actually  and  rightly  attributed  to  o-tcrjvea)  by  Liddell  and 
Scott.  Thus  in  Anab.  5,  5,  n,  vvv  Be  aKovopev  t/fia?  ets  re 
rr)V  TTO\IV  ftia  7rap€\r}\v06ra<f  eviovs  o-tcijvovv  ev  raw  ot/ctat?, 
means  '  we  hear  that  you  have  forced  your  way  into  the 
city  and  are  quartered  in  the  houses ' ;  so  also  the  same 
word  in  5,  5,  20.  In  the  third  passage  the  word  is  used 
once  more  with  reference  to  the  feeding  idea  in  ava-KTjvia, 
Cyr.  4,  5,  8,  auro?  re  e/j,edv(TKeTO  peO'  o)V7rep  ecrKijvov  a><?  CTT' 
evrv^ia.  Hence  in  thirteen  of  the  sixteen  classical  pas- 
sages (TKTfjv6(a  has  the  primary  idea  to  tent;  in  three,  to  be 
in  a  tent ;  (cf.  in  this  sense  fteo-oo)). 

That  the  former  is  the  proper  meaning  of  the  verb  is 
made  still  more  certain  by  its  usage  in  late  authors.  In 
these  the  forms  which  must  come  from  OTCT^OGJ  are  O-KTIVOVV, 
-<rKf)Vovv,  <TKT)V(i>(T(0,  -ecrtcr/vciHre,  ecrKijvcoo'av,  -eGKijvaMrav,  GKT)- 


96  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 


v&aai,  -tTKrjv&o-ai,  oveTjiwo-as,  -<TKr)V(i>aavT£<;, 
-e<rKT)V(bK€i,  ea-Ktivapevos,  -eo-Krjvmdrjvai.  These  forms  occur 
25  times.  In  twenty  of  the  passages  the  verb  has  its 
proper  usage  and  meaning,  in  four  it  takes  an  accusative 
or  is  used  in  the  passive  with  a  subject  accusative,  and  in 
one  the  form  is  eo-Krjwfievos,  which  must  be  considered  by 
itself.  In  not  one  is  it  used  in  the  meaning  to  be  tn 
quarters,  be  in  camp.  This  meaning  is  assigned  by 
Liddell  and  Scott  to  vKijve'a),  and  it  begins  to  look  as  if 
Eustathius  was  right  when  he  said  teal  TO  (T/CIJVW  8e  <TKT)- 
vca<Tco  .  .  .  Kal  TO  o-Kqvw  (TKrjvrjo-a)  Siafopav  e%ov(riv  fyavepdv 
(see  above,  p.  87).  In  eleven  of  the  twenty  passages  the 
word  means  to  pitch  one's  tent,  camp,  encamp  in  the  military 
sense  (with  suitable  variations  for  the  compounds),  viz. 
-a-Krjvovv,  Polyb.  14,  2,  8;  35,  2,  4;  Plut.  Eum.  15  ;  -eovc??- 
vaxre,  Plut.  Demetr.  g;  Polyb.  IO,  31,  5  ;  ea-Kijvwa-av,  Poll.  I, 
160;  -ea-KJvaa-av,  Polyb.  21,  13,  /;  Polyaen.  7,  21,  6;  Poll. 
i,  1  60;  -a-KrjvcoaavTes,  Polyb.  4,  1  8,  8;  4,  72,  i.  In  one  of 
the  nineteen  it  means  camp  out  in  the  religious  sense, 
Ael.  V.  H.  4,  9,  nXarcoz/  6  'A.pi<TT6)vo<;  ev  'O\u/A7ria  avve- 
a-K^vMcrev  ayv&criv  avOp(O7roi<f.  The  remaining  eight  of  the 
twenty  form  a  class  by  themselves,  for  in  them  the  verb 
has  neither  the  military  nor  the  religious  sense,  but  means 
simply  fix  one's  dwelling,  take  up  one's  abode)-  The  first 
is  from  an  inscription  (Ditt.  Syll.  126,  3  =  Hicks,  149,  3), 

1  This  is  its  only  meaning  in  the  New  Testament  and  in  the  Greek  version 
of  the  Old.  I  have  not  chosen  to  include  its  Scriptural  occurrence  in  the  body 
of  my  article,  but  insert  here  the  following  passages,  on  the  authority  of 
Professor  Thayer's  Lexicon,  as  the  only  ones  in  the  New  Testament  in  which 
the  verb  is  found  :  Matth.  13,  32  ;  Mk.  4,  32  ;  Lk.  13,  19  ;  /«.  I,  14  ;  Acts  2, 
26;  2  Cor.  12,  9  ;  Rev.  7,  15  ;  12,  12  ;  13,  6  ;  21,  3.  Neither  ffK^vAu  nor 
ffK-qvtu  are  found  in  the  New  Testament;  cf.  Thorn.  Mag.  quoted  above, 
p.  86  ;  so  Thayer. 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO   LEXICOGRAPHY  97 

vv  8e  TOVTOV  Kal  7ravr)yvp[i]%€iv  pera  rwv  Trap'  [ypwv 
a(f)iKOfji€~\  vwv  Kal  Ka\dadai  Ttf'iov.  The  inscription  con- 
cerns the  incorporation  of  the  people  of  Lebedos  with  the 
Teians,  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  century  B.C.  Although  this 
passage  is  very  like  Plato,  Rep.  614  E,  olov  ev  Travrjyvpei 
KaTaa-Krjvdadat,  I  do  not  think  that  the  meaning  of  a-Krjvovv 
in  the  inscription  is  as  limited  as  that  of  KaTaa-Kijvaa-Qai  in 
the  Republic.  The  inscription  goes  on  to  state  how  tem- 
porary dwellings  are  to  be  provided.  The  meaning  take 
up  ones  abode  is  found  also  as  follows  :  TrapaaKrjvovv,  Plut. 
2,  p.  51  E,  KaracrKTjvovv,  Diod.  Sic.  19,  94;  KareaKijvcoa-e, 
Josephus,  A.  3,  8,  5  ;  a-fcrjvwaai,  K.araa-Kr)V(oa-ai,  Poll.  I,  73  ; 
Kare(TKr)V(i>Kevai,  Synesius,  Migne  Ixvi,  p.  1179;  in  Diod. 
Sic.  14,  32,  fj,€TaaKr)vovv  means  remove. 

I  come  next  to  the  four  cases  in  late  authors  in  which 
a-tcrivoa)  takes  an  accusative.  One  has  already  been  men- 
tioned, the  only  passage  in  which  the  verb  is  causative 
(Plut.  2,  p.  334,  B,  see  above,  p.  94).  In  Polyaenus,  7, 
21,  6,  we  find  Trpoo-eTroirjo-aTO  a-TparoTreSeveiv,  ra?  pev  fteyi- 
o-ra?  Kal  v^XoTara?  a-fcrjvas  Kara  irpoffmirov  o-fcrjvtoo-as,  he 
pretended  to  encamp,  pitching  the  biggest  and  highest  tents 
in  front.  In  classical  authors  the  phrase  would  be  er/c^m? 
TTTjfacr&u,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  Hdt.  6,  12  and 
[Andoc.  33,  9]  l  (cf.  o-KrjVOTrrjyia,  (ncijvoTrrjyea)},  or  tr/c^va? 
20TO0&U,  cf.  Xen.  Cyr.  8,  5,  3.  Polyaenus  used  the  phrase 
on  the  principle  of  cognate  accusatives.  Perhaps  he  was 
influenced  by  the  Latin  use  of  tendere;  though  tentoria 
tendere  does  not  occur  in  the  authors,  we  have  iubet  prae- 
torium  tendi,  Caes.  B.  C.  3,  82.  Cf.  also  the  cognate 


1  In  Plat.  Legg.  817  C,  (T/ciyvAs  TTT}  Carres,  the  reference  is  to  a  tent  or  booth 
set  up  by  actors  in  a  tragedy. 


98 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 


accusative  in  Aesch.  Eum.  634  (above,  p.  94).  The  next 
accusative  is  in  Aelian  (  V.  H.  3,  14),  irpoo-era^e  ra  Ka7rrj\ela 
eVt  TWV  rei'x&v  Biaa-KrjVcoQijvai,  he  ordered  shops  to  be  set  up 
along  the  wall,  where  the  object  has  become  subject  of  the 
infinitive.  Last  we  have  in  Plutarch  (Cam.  31),  ftiafrftevov 
aicrjvovv  epenrta,  forcing  them  to  inhabit  ruins.  Here  is  the 
result  of  the  post-classical  use  of  crKrjvow  in  the  sense  of  take 
up  one's  abode.  It  has  become  as  transitive  a  verb  as  ot/cew. 

Out  of  the  25  passages  to  be  examined  there  remains 
one  in  which  occurs  the  form  earierivwpevos,  Aristid.  ii,  p. 
277  Dind.,  O/AOU  roi?  vavrais  ea-Kijwofievos.  Here  we  might 
have  expected  eo-Krjvrjpevos  (see  p.  92).  Thomas  Magister 
quoted  this  passage  for  the  very  reason  that  we  have  in  it 
an  unusual  form,  one  he  says  found  nowhere  else  napa 
rot?  p^ropa-t.  The  fact,  which  will  become  more  evident 
as  we  go  on,  that  oTCT/yoeo  was  by  far  the  commonest  verb 
in  late  Greek,  may  account  for  its  usage  here.  Or  its 
existence  may  be  due  to  the  principle  of  analogy;  the 
verb  crKrjvoQ)  ought  to  be  causative ;  it  really  is  so  used  in 
one  passage  in  Plutarch ;  hence  the  perf .  pass,  might 
be  thought  to  mean  provided  with  a  tent,  i.e.  tent  (cf.  the 
passives  of  yv^voco,  %o\6<o,  povoa),  al^arou,  and  the  form 
&e&(o/j,dT(i)ij,ai,  Aesch.  SuppL  958). 

I  have  now  spoken  of  every  form  which  necessarily 
comes  from  -6a>,  and  it  appears  that  in  the  very  great 
majority  of  cases  (33-3,  omitting  the  five  places  where  the 
verb  takes  an  accusative  and  omitting  also  eove^w/AeW) 
the  verb  <TKi]vda>  has  what  I  have  spoken  of  as  its  proper 
meaning.  It  will  also  be  observed  that  the  military  sense 
predominates  with  this  word  (26-16).  This  was  far  from 
being  the  case  with  the  verb  in  -da>. 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO   LEXICOGRAPHY  99 

Examining  next  the  forms  which  might  come  from  either 
-eo)  or  -o&>,  I  find  that  they  occur  33  times.  In  seven  of 
these  the  primary  meaning  is  encamp ;  five  of  the  seveif 
are  military,  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  refer  all  seven  to 
crtcrjvdo),  viz.  eaKijvovv,  Xen.  A.  3,  4,  35  ;  Cyr.  2,  I,  25  ; 
Arrian,  A.  i,  3,  6;  3,  29,  4;  Josephus,  B.J.  3,  7,  17.  The 
sixth  is  in  Plutarch  (2,  p.  627  A).  The  words  here  are  : 
fjirj  paicpov  OVTWS  aTroa-icrjvov  TWV  ZSiwv,  don't  settle  so  far 
afield  from  where  you  belong.  I  should  be  inclined  here  to 
amend  the  accent  and  read  the  active  airo<TKr)vov,  were  it 
not  for  two  reasons ;  first,  in  Plut.  2,  p.  334  B  (see  above, 
p.  94)  the  active  of  this  very  verb  is  used  causatively; 
secondly,  we  had  the  form  eV/cT/veoytie'vo?  in  Aristides  (see  p. 
98).  The  seventh  form  is  fieraa-K^vw  rfj<s  TrarpiSos,  Anon, 
ap.  Walz,  Rhett.  3,  p.  583,  25 ;  the  meaning  is  remove  (cf. 
Diod.  Sic.  14,  32,  above,  p.  97). 

In  nine  of  the  33  passages  the  primary  meaning  is  be  in 
camp.  It  is  true  that  I  was  obliged  to  admit  (p.  95)  that 
a-KTjvoa)  had  this  meaning  in  three  cases.  But  these  nine 
may  be  assigned  to  a  different  verb,  a-Krjveco,  and  under  it  I 
shall  place  them.  All  are  military  except  the  last.  The 
first  eight  are:  o-Kijvov/j,ev,  Xen.  A.  5,  5,  21;  <rKr)vov<n, 
Xen.  A.  5,  5,  20,  -o-Krjvovo-i,  Arrian,  Anab.  2,  12,  4;  OTO;« 
voiev,  Xen.  A.  7,  4,  12;  a-Krjvovvros,  Xen.  Hellen.  4,  6,  7; 
a-Krjvovvref,  Xen.  Cyr.  4,  2,  1 1  ;  a-KrjvovvTas,  Xen.  A.  4,  5,  33  ; 
6,  i,  i.  The  ninth  is  in  Plutarch  (2,  p.  735  D):  ot  8e 
(f>vX\.o^oot  ftr/vet  tfBr)  TOJ  ^et/u.ww  Trapao-fcrjvovvres,  where  the 
idea  resembles  abiding,  not  taking  up  one's  abode. 

Next  there  are  five  passages  in  which  I  cannot  decide 
between  a-Krjvea)  and  a-tcrjvdw.  Four  are  military,  and  the 
meaning  may  be  either  encamp  or  be  in  camp,  viz.  e 


IOQ  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Xen.  A.  I,  4.  95  4,  8,  25;  6,  4,  7;  ovn/z/oiWe?,  4,  4,  14. 
The  fifth  is  an  instance  of  the  '  camp  meeting '  use.  In 
the  description  of  the  festivities  held  in  the  re/ievo?  which 
Xenophon  dedicated  to  Artemis  (A.  5,  3,  9)  occur  the 
words  Trapeze  8e  77  0eo?  rofc  o-tcijvova-i  a\<f>iTa  K.  r.  \.  Here 
ffKTjvovan  may  mean  to  those  who  were  wont  to  camp  out 
or  to  those  who  were  camping  out. 

Finally,  out  of  the  thirty-three,  there  are  twelve  pas- 
sages, all  in  Xenophon,  in  which  the  verb  has  the  'feed- 
ing* sense.  I  have  already  mentioned  (p.  95)  that  this 
notion  was  attached  to  Xenophon's  use  of  a-tcrjvda)  in  two 
passages.  Therefore,  a  form  doubtful  in  itself,  but  which 
means  to  feed,  should  be  ascribed  to  o-Krjvda) ;  one  which 
means  be  feeding  should  be  ascribed  to  a-K-ijvew.  Out  of 
the  twelve  I  give  to  a-Krjvoco  the  forms  a-va-Krjvovo-i,  R.  L.  13, 
i;  Hellen.  5,  3,  20;  efo>  o-tcijvotev,  R.  L.  15,  4;  OIKOI  <ricr)- 
vovvras,  R.  L.  5,  2  ;  and  to  a-fcrjveco  the  forms  O-VCTKIJVOVVTCOV, 
R.  L.  5,  4>  C-  3>  2>  25  J  Hellen.  3,  2,  8;  o-va-/cr)voi€v,  C.  2, 
2,  i ;  o-KrjvovvTas,1  Hellen.  7,  4,  36.  Three  forms  remain, 
compounds  of  Sid.  The  meaning  of  all  is  leave  the  table 
(i.e.  eat  through  to  the  end),  and  all  may  be  assigned  to 
<TKT]v6(ot  viz.  Siaa-fcrjvwa-tv,  R.  L.  5,  3  ;  Biaa-tcrjvwv,  Hellen.  4, 
8,  i8;2  $iaa-icr)vovvTQ)v,  C.  3,  I,  38. 

This  completes  my  examination  of  a-Krjvoco.  The  forms 
occur  60  times,  of  which  26  are  Attic,  25  late,  8  in  lexi- 
cographers and  grammarians,  and  one  in  an  inscription. 

1  Here  Treiber  (p.  22,  note   i)  would   read  ffvffKi)vovvras,   a   probable 
improvement.     We  have  seen  that  the  'feeding*  sense  may  attach   to  the 
simple  ffKyvlxa,  but  this  was  only  when  prepositions  (<n5v  and  /xerd)  and  their 
cases,  or  adverbs  (of»co(,  Qu)  strengthened  the  verb. 

2  Here  Keller  accepts  and  prints  the  emendation  Suricetuv,  which  has  much 
in  its  favor ;  still  one  might  expect  to  find  SKWKTJXWX  in  his  index  of  words. 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY       IOI 


I  come  finally  to  the  forms  of  a-K^vew.  Of  verbs  in  -eo> 
Curtius  points  out  that  at  a  very  early  period  they  differed 
from  forms  in  -ao>  by  being  intransitive.  We  saw  that 
we  might  have  expected  a-Krjvda)  to  denote  the  exercise 
of  some  activity  or  the  existence  of  some  state;  but  we 
found  no  certain  active  form  of  a-/crjvda)  in  the  authors. 
We  did  find  a-icrjvdcrBat,  etc.,  and,  from  the  peculiarity  of  its 
usage,  argued  that  crKyvav,  had  it  occurred,  might  have 
been  found  to  have  the  transitive  meaning  of  shelter.  If 
we  find,  therefore,  forms  such  as  oveT/z/Tjo-a)  and  e'ovcT^cra, 
which  might  come  equally  well  from  -oo>  or  -eta,  and  if 
these  forms  are  intransitive,  we  might  refer  them  to 
(TKTjvea>.  The  following  are  all  such  forms  that  I  have 
found  :  -cr/c^i^cro),  -crKijvtjaeTe,  a/crjvijcrova-i,  a-Ktjvijaoiev,  CTKT]- 
vijaeiv,  ecTKrivrfae,  ecrfcijvija'av,  -ea'fcijvrjcrai',  GK,r\vr\crai,  -<rtcr]vf}- 
o-ai,  -a-Krjvija-avT&f.  Now  a-KTjveo)  might  mean  be  in  camp  ; 
cf.  o-Tot^eo),  be  in  line,  op^e'co,  be  moored,  ot/ce&),  house,  i.e. 
be  in  a  house,  dwell.  Or  it  might  mean  encamp,  like 
av\eco,  flute,  play  the  flute,  Senrvea),  dine.  The  future 
forms  occur  five  times,  the  aorists  sixteen  times.  Three 
of  the  futures  have  the  meaning  will  be  in  camp,  will  be 
quartered,  and  are  military,  viz.  Xen.  A.  4,  7,  27  ;  Hellen. 
5,  i,  20  (bis).  Another  future,  a-K-rjv^a-Q),  is  mentioned  by 
Eustathius  with  the  remark  that  it  clearly  differs  from 
a-Kr]va)a-(o  (see  above,  p.  87).  The  fifth  has  the  'feeding' 
sense,  and  means  will  be  feeders  together, 
Arrian,  Epict.  2,  22,  37  ;  cf.  Trieber,  p.  22.  To 
have  already  assigned  nine  contracted  forms  of  the  present 
tense  (p.  99),  meaning  be  in  quarters,  and  all  but  one  mili- 
tary, as  well  as  five  similar  forms  (p.  100)  used  in  the  sense 
be  feeders  together.  I  agree,  therefore,  with  Liddell  and 


I02  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Scott  in  giving  this  verb  the  meaning  be  in  camp,  be  quar- 
tered. But  on  coming  to  the  forms  of  the  aorist  tense  it 
appears  that  eo-Kyvrjo-av,  for  instance,  does  not  mean  they 
were  or  had  been  in  quarters,  but  they  went  into  quarters, 
they  encamped.  Still,  this  might  have  been  expected, 
and  there  is  no  confusion  here  between  a-Kijvew  and 
a-Krjvoo).  The  fact  is  we  are  dealing  with  an  ingressive 
aorist.  '  The  aorist  of  verbs  which  denote  a  state  or  con- 
dition generally  expresses  the  entrance  into  that  state  or 
condition '  (Goodwin,  M.  T.  55). 

It  is  instructive  on  the  difference  in  meaning  between 
the  presents  in  -eo>  and  -o'oo  that  Xenophon  says  in  A.  4,  4,  8 
eSo£e  Siao-fcrjvria-ai,  but  in  4,  4,  IO  e'So/cet  OVK  dcr^aXe?  elvat, 
$ia<rKr)vovv,  not  Siaa-Krjveiv.  This  difference  has  not  been 
heretofore  noted,  so  far  as  I  am  aware.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence at  all  that  the  meaning  go  into  camp  ever  attached 
to  the  present  tense  of  o-icrjvea) ;  hence  the  treatment  of 
this  verb,  and  especially  of  its  compounds,  in  lexicons  is 
erroneous.  Returning  to  the  sixteen  forms  of  the  aorist, 
it  appears  that  all  are  used  in  the  military  sense,  and  all 
but  two  are  in  Xenophon,  viz.  ea-K^vrjae,  Dio  Cass.  51,  i  ; 
eo-Krtvrjcrav,  Thuc.  I,  89,  3;  Xen.  A.  2,  4,  14;  4,  2,  22;  7, 
3,  15;  7.  7,  I  ;  Cyr.  8,  3,  34;  -c^vija-av,  A.  3,  I,  28; 
3>  4»  33;  7»  4»  II  5  Hellen.  4,  2,  23;  a-tcrjvrja-ai,  A.  6,  5,  21  ; 
-(r/crjvrja-ai,  A.  3,  4,  32  ;  4,  4,  8 ;  -aKTqvrjvavres,  A.  4,  5,  29 ; 
Hellen.  4,  5,  2. 

Finally,  there  remains  the  only  verbal  which  I  have 
found,  Siao-KrjvrjTeov,  Xen.  A.  4,  4,  14.  In  spite  of  the  lack 
of  an  aorist  passive  or  of  any  other  passive  form  of  o-Krjvea), 
this  verbal  must  be  assigned  to  Siaa-Kijveo)  on  account  of 
the  use  of  this  verb  just  above  in  the  aorist  active  in  the 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY  103 

sense  of  encamp  apart  (4,  4,  8).  This  completes  my 
examination  of  the  forms  of  overjz/e'o).  They  occur  39  times, 
of  which  3 1  are  Attic,  4  in  late  authors,  and  4  in  gramma- 
rians (Eust.  and  Thorn.  Mag.). 

I  have  been  unable,  in  the  case  of  five  forms  (p.  99),  to 
decide  between  -ea>  and  -oo>.  The  Hesychian  o-fcrjvwvres 
was  left  doubtful  also  (p.  93).  One  other  form,  hitherto 
unmentioned,  I  must  leave  undecided.  A  Phocian  inscrip- 
tion (Foucart,  B.  C.  H.  viii,  p.  215  =  Collitz,  Sammlung: 
Die  lokrischen  und  phokischen  Inschr.,  1531)  runs  as  fol- 
lows :  ev  rot  favatceiot,  Ovovra  crtcavev  [7]  vvaiica  [ft]?/  Trapi- 
/ie[v].  The  meaning  is  evidently  'a  sacrificer  may  pitch 
his  tent  in  the  Anakeion ;  women  not  admitted.'  Here 
the  form  atcavev  may  represent  either  (r/caveiv,  Att.  o-Krjvelv 
(e  =«),  or  fftcavav,  Att:  fficrjvav  (e=»7,  then  a-icavY)v;  cf.  eVi- 
Tifjirjv,  Wescher- Foucart,  304;  oprjv,  Blass-Kuhner,  p.  205). 
If  it  represents  a-Krjvav,  it  is  the  only  active  form  of  this 
verb ;  if  it  represents  a-Krjv^lv,  it  is  the  only  place  in  which 
the  present  of  this  verb  means  pitch  a  tent,  encamp. 
I  see  no  way  of  settling  this  question,  but  even  if  it  could 
be  settled  it  would  throw  no  light  on  the  usage  of  the 
forms  in  Attic  Greek.  In  fact,  G.  Meyer,  Gr.  6r.2,  p.  51, 
says  '  phokisch  a-Kavrjv  =  Att.  O-KTJVOVV,  (cf .  also  Roberts, 
Grk.  Epigr.,  p.  232). 

In  the  following  table  the  occurrence  of  the  forms  is 
summarized :  — 

-ao) 

Doubtful 


Total. 

Attic. 

Late. 

Lex  and  Gram. 

Insc 

9 

7 

2 

... 

... 

39 
60 

31 
26 

4 
25 

4 
8 

I 

7 

5 

... 

i 

I 

"5 

69 

3i 

13 

2 

IO4 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


In  closing,  something  may  be  said  on  the  general  usage 
of  o-Kijveat  and  (Ttcrjvoo)  in  the  military  sense.  In  this  sense 
the  verbs  in  the  Classics  are  almost  Xenophontic.  It  will 
not  do  to  say  that  the  rarity  of  occurrence  in  other  authors 
is  due  to  the  unimportance  of  the  camp  in  ordinary  Greek 
campaigns,  and  that  there  is  nothing  surprising  in  finding 
the  word  so  often  in  Xenophon,  where  camping  is  con- 
stantly mentioned  in  the  long  expeditions  which  he  de- 
scribes. The  Greek  camp  was,  to  be  sure,  unimportant, 
compared  to  the  Roman  (Droysen,  Kriegsalt.,  pp.  88,  139, 
184);  still,  camping  is  spoken  of  not  infrequently.  But 
the  regular  word  used  is  a-rparoTreSevco  and  its  compounds. 
Thus,  Thucydides  uses  this  word  (the  simple  verb)  27 
times  (Essen),  Xenophon  himself  29  times  in  the  Hellenica 
(Keller),  and  16  times  in  the  Anabasis.  As  an  example  of 
late  Greek  I  have  noted  32  occurrences  in  Arrian's  Anaba- 
sis (he  used  a-Krjvoco  twice  and  o-tcrjve'co  once).  Its  com- 
pounds, especially  of  Kara,  are  very  common.  There  is, 
of  course,  this  difference  in  meaning,  that  a-rparoTreSevco 
cannot  be  used  of  one  man,  while  trKijvea)  or  a-icrjvoa)  may  be 
used  of  one  or  of  many.  Thus,  I  have  observed  only 
two  cases  of  a-rparoTreBeva)  in  the  singular  in  the  Anabasis 
(2,  2,  15 ;  7,  2,  11),  but  these  are  no  real  exceptions,  as  the 
subject  is  a  king  or  general  and  of  course  the  troops  are 
included  (cf.  Polyaen.  7,  21,  6).  It  might  seem,  however, 
that  <rrpaT07re8ev(o  could  denote  an  open-air  encampment, 
but  <TKi]v€a)  or  o-Krjvow  an  encampment  only  under  shelter, 
in  tents  or  in  the  houses  of  a  village  as  quarters.  This 
distinction  appears  in  Xen.  A.  4,  4,  7-14.  But  it  is  hardly 
ever  preserved.  Thus  we  find  irn-aiOptoi  S5  e|o>  eo-rparoTre- 
&€V€T€,  A.  7,  6,  24,  but  <rtcr)vov(jiev  viraMpioi,  in  5,  5,  21. 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  LEXICOGRAPHY  105 


Again,  we  have  fcmpijv  8e  Seigas  avrois  o5  a-Krjvtfo-ovo-i,  4,  7, 
27,  but  effrparoTreSevovro  ev  K(i>/j,g,  3,  5,  I  (cf.  4,  5,  1  1  ;  4,  8, 
19).  In  2,  2,  1  6  and  17  Karea-Kijvijcrav  and  la-rparo'TreSev- 
<ravTo  are  used  of  the  same  camp,  and  for  still  greater 
confusion  see  6,  4,  I,  and  7.  We  do  not,  however,  find 
this  loose  usage  in  other  authors,  and  it  may  well  be  sup- 
posed that,  in  o-Krjveo)  and  ffKtjvoa)  Xenophon,  who  was  a 
real  and  not  a  '  play  '  soldier,  was  using  words  which  were 
constantly  in  the  mouths  of  the  men.  If  we  had  a  Doric 
literature  we  might  find  that  these  words  were  preferred 
by  the  Spartans. 


NOTES   ON   LYSIAS1 

Or.  7,  39:   ova  yap  01  roiovroi   el<riv   eTramwrarot  KOI 
rwv  KIV&VVCOV,  rocrovTcp  Trdvres  ai/rou? 


THE  meaning  of  eTramwraTot  has  passed  without  men 
tion  in  all  the  commentaries  except  those  of  Shuck- 
burgh  and  Kocks.  The  German's  note  is  'urn  so  mehr 
Schuld  und  Verlegenheit  aus  ihnen  erwachst  u.  s.  w.' 
Shuckburgh's  is  '  eVatrto?  properly  means  held  to  blame 
for,  but  here  it  appears  to  mean  calculated  to  attach  blame.' 
Both  of  these  editors  seem  to  have  the  right  idea,  for  the 
point  deserving  of  notice  is  that  eiraiTios  is  here  active  in 
sense.  Hence  the  passage  means  '  the  more  blame  such 
suits  cause  (that  is,  the  more  invidious  they  are)  and  the 
more  perplexing  they  are,  so  much  the  more  all  avoid  them.' 
On  the  face  of  it,  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  e-Tramo? 
should  not  have  an  active  as  well  as  a  passive  meaning  (cf. 
€7rt£77fuo5,  active,  e.g.  in  Thuc.  2,  32,  passive  in  Plat.  Legg. 
765  A.);  but  the  active  sense  is  not  entered  in  our  dic- 
tionaries, and  the  passive  so  predominates  that  Shuckburgh 
is  led  to  call  it  the  '  proper  '  meaning.  Yet  the  active 
occurs  also  in  Thuc.  5,  65,  2,  r?)?  e|  "Apyow  eVam'ov  ava- 
X<op^(T€(o<f,  'the  retreat  which  had  caused  him  (Agis)  to 
be  blamed  '  (Fowler,  after  Classen,  who  refers  back  to 

1  From  the  Harvard  Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  1892,  iii,  191  f.;    1894, 
v,  49  ff.  ;    1901,  xii,  236. 

106 


NOTES   ON   LYSIAS  IO/ 

Thucydides's  statement  in  60,  2,  ev  alria  8'  efyov  tear  a\\ij- 
Xou?  7ro\\7j  rbv  *Aryi,v,  and  to  the  same  effect  about  the 
same  retreat  in  63,  i).  These  two  passages  from  Lysias 
and  Thucydides  are  the  only  ones  in  which  the  adjective 
is  active  or  causal,  and  also  the  only  ones  in  which  it  agrees 
with  a  common,  not  a  proper,  noun. 

The  word  itself  seems  familiar  enough,  yet  it  is  of  some- 
what rare  occurrence.  I  find  it  in  only  nine 1  other  places 
in  the  authors,  and  in  them  all  it  is  passive.  Its  earliest 
occurrence  serves  to  show  the  meaning  in  all  the  rest. 
This  is  Horn.  A  335  :  — 

ov  TI  fj.oi  VjU,/Aes  firairioi,  dAA'  'Aya/u.e/Avwv. 

The  others  are  Aesch.  Bum.  465,  467;  Eur.  Hipp.  1383; 
Thuc.  6,  61,  i;  Ap.  Rhod.  i,  414;  2,  614;  Plut  Comp. 
Dion.  c.  Brut.  2 ;  Nonnus,  Dionys.  7,  59. 

There  is,  however,  the  following  curious  gloss  in  Lex. 
Seguer.  (Bekker,  Anecd.  p.  188,  5):  eTrairtwraroi,  (rv/co(f)dv- 
TCII.  From  the  rarity  of  the  adjective,  occurring,  as  it 
apparently  does,  only  once  in  the  orators,  one  feels  almost 
inclined  to  think  that  the  gloss  must  refer  to  the  passage 
in  Lysias.  Yet,  if  it  does  (and  always  provided  that  the 
gloss  contains  the  right  interpretation),  TOIOVTOI  refers  to 
(Tv/co(f>dvTai,  and  then  it  seems  hardly  possible  to  keep  T&V 
KIV&VVWV.  There  is  a  strong  temptation  to  strike  out  these 
two  words  and  to  read  6Vo>  yap  01  TOLOVTOI  elaiv  ejrai- 
TKararoi,  ical  aTropaiTaroi,  rocrovrw  Trdwres  aurou?  favyovcri 
,  '  the  more  culpable  and  hard  to  deal  with  (for 
used  of  accusers  in  just  this  sense,  cf.  Plat. 
Apol.  1 8  D)  such  men  are,  so  much  the  more  all  avoid 
them.'  The  rhythm  of  the  sentence  would  then  be  a  little 

1  In  Xen.  Anab.  2,  i,  5,  I  follow  Hug  in  reading  viraLnov. 


I08  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

better;  but  for  the  absolute  use  of  eVat'no?  (without  a 
genitive  or  adverbial  modifier)  the  only  parallel  is  Thuc.  5, 
65,  quoted  above ;  and  there  en-amo?  is  active. 

Or.  12  :  The  new  Aristotle  On  the  Constitution  of  Athens 
seems  to  me  to  make  it  clear  that  the  twelfth  oration  was 
delivered  by  Lysias  at  the  evOvvat  of  Eratosthenes,  and  not 
at  a  trial  for  murder.  When  Lysias  returned  to  Athens 
from  exile,  he  found  there  the  very  man  through  whose 
agency  his  brother  Polemarchus  had  been  delivered  over 
to  the  Thirty  for  execution.  Eratosthenes  had  not  gone 
to  Eleusis  under  the  terms  of  the  amnesty  (stated  in  Arist. 
Resp.  Ath.  39);  for,  once  there,  he  could  not  have  been 
brought  back  to  answer  such  a  charge  as  Lysias  had  to 
make.  Even  if  past  murders  are  included  under  the  pro- 
vision in  Resp.  Ath.  39,  ra<?  Se  S/tfa?  TOU  (frdvov  elvai  KOTCI  ra 
Trdrpia  a  TI?  nva  avro^eip  cnreKTeivev  r)  erpwaev,  this  would 
not  apply  to  Eratosthenes;  for  he  had  not  killed  Pole- 
marchus with  his  own  hand.  And  however  doubtful  the 
rest  of  the  text  is  here  (I  have  followed  Sandys),  we  must 
read  airroxeip  or  a  word  of  similar  meaning,  like  avTo%eip( 
or  avTo%eipiq.  Staying  on,  as  Eratosthenes  did  in  Athens, 
he  must  have  known  that  charges  would  be  brought  against 
him  by  his  enemies,  and  hence  he  would  avail  himself  as 
soon  as  possible  of  that  clause  in  the  amnesty  by  which 
those  of  the  Thirty  who  chose  to  submit  their  accounts  of 
office,  were  no  longer  liable  to  attacks  for  the  past.  This 
would  have  been  the  easiest  way  once  and  for  all  to  have 
done  with  those  who  had  anything  against  him.  Fuhr  and 
Gebauer  in  their  editions  have  held  (as  against  Blass,  Att. 
Bereds.  i2,  p.  540  ff.,  Meier  and  Schoemann,  p.  257  f. 


NOTES  ON   LYSIAS  109 

Weidner  in  his  edition)  that  Eratosthenes  was  tried  for 
murder  at  the  Palladion.  Their  strongest  argument  is  that 
there  is  no  direct  mention  of  evffvvai  in  the  text.  But,  as 
Blass  points  out,  the  same  sort  of  argument  is  equally 
strong  against  them  ;  for  Lysias,  in  the  first  part  of  his 
speech,  makes  almost  as  much  of  the  pillage  of  his  prop- 
erty as  he  does  of  the  execution  of  his  brother,  and  he  does 
not  even  mention  Polemarchus  in  his  recapitulation  at  the 
end.  To  this  argument  I  would  add  that  the  action  of 
Archinus  (Arist.  Resp.  Ath.  40)  in  persuading  the  Senate 
to  put  to  death  without  a  trial  a  person  who  had  broken 
the  oath  /*?)  fjLvrjcnKaKelv,  and  the  salutary  results  of  that 
action,  make  it  extremely  doubtful  whether  the  partisans 
of  the  Thirty  were  at  this  time  brought  to  court  in  any 
cases  except  those  of  evdvvai. 

Since  I  have  referred  to  the  oath  ^  /j.vr)<riKciKeiv,  I  may 
add  that  it  has  sometimes  been  thought  (following  Lueb- 
bert,  de  amnestia)  that  this  oath  was  not  sworn  to  until 
after  the  final  overthrow  of  the  Thirty  in  Eleusis,  as 
described  by  Xen.  Hellen.  2,  4,  43.  But  Aristotle  (Resp. 
Ath.  40),  SieXvOrja-av  Se  Kal  777309  TOV9  ev  'RXevcrlvi  KaroiKrj- 
craz/Ta?  em  r/otra)  //.era  Tr)V  e^oiKrja-tv,  CTTI  Sevaiverov  ap%ov- 
TO<?,  shows  that  this  final  overthrow  did  not  occur  until  two 
years  (401-400  B.C.)  after  the  democracy  was  restored. 
Hence  Xenophon,  unless  absolutely  at  fault,  can  only  refer 
to  a  reaffirmation  of  this  oath.  It  cannot  be  supposed  that 
the  trial  of  Eratosthenes  took  place  so  late  as  this. 


Or.  12,  16  :  rpi<av  Be  Ovpfav 

It  is  impossible  to  identify  these  doors  with  certainty. 
We  do  not  know  how  elaborate  was  the  house  of  Damnip- 


I1O  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

pus  inside,  although  we  know  that  it  ran  from  one  street 
back  to  another  (apfyiOvpos,  §  15).  Nor  do  we  know 
where  Lysias  and  Damnippus  had  their  hurried  talk  (§  14). 
They  may  have  been  in  the  av\r),  for  Lysias  may  simply 
have  called  D.  to  him  as  he  stood  among  the  other  pris- 
oners ;  or  they  may  have  stepped  into  one  of  the  rooms 
which  opened  from  the  av\r)\  or  they  may  even  have 
passed  the  /terauXo?  Ovpa.  Nothing  is  known  of  D.,  but 
he  appears  to  have  been  trusted  by  the  Thirty,  as  they 
were  using  his  house,  and  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
a  prisoner.  Theognis  and  his  men  were  guarding  the 
front  door  (§  16),  and  if  they  allowed  Lysias  to  speak  to 
D.  at  all  they  might  have  let  them  go  together  into  a 
room.  Or  Lysias  may  have  originally  been  thrust  into 
a  room.  The  editors  of  Lysias  do  not  seem  to  appreciate 
the  uncertainties  of  the  case,  and  they  are  too  offhand  in 
their  explanation  of  what  these  three  doors  were.  The 
following  all  seem  to  me  to  be  possible  explanations :  — 

I.  (Supposing  that   L.   and  D.  talked   in   the  av\r)}: 
I,  the  /LterafXo?;  2,  door  from  the  house  to  the  garden, 
tcrjTraia  dvpa  (if  D.'s  house  had  a  garden);    3,  from  the 
garden  to  the  back  street. 

II.  (The  explanation  of  Fuhr  and  Frohberger):    I,  the 
door  of  the  room  in  which  Lysias  was  imprisoned  (but  I  see  no 
reason  for  being  sure  that  D.'s  house  had  doors  to  the  rooms 
instead  of  curtains ;  cf.  Hermann,  Gr.  Privatalt.,  3d  ed.,  p. 
156,  A.  i);  2,  the  ^erayXo? ;  3,  door  from  house  to  street. 

III.  I,  /ierauXo?  ;  2,  door  into  one  of  the  working-rooms, 
toTwve?  ;  3,  door  into  the  street. 

IV.  (If  L.  and  D.  had  passed  the  /ierayXo?) :   i,  into  the 
;  2,  into  the  garden ;  3,  into  the  street. 


NOTES  ON  LYSIAS  III 

Or.  12,  44 :  ovrws  ot^  VTTO  T&V  7ro\e/uW  ftdvov  a\\a  ical 
VTTO  TOVTCOV  TToXiT&v  ovToov  €7re/3ov\eve<r0e,  OTTO)? 
prjSev  ^Inj<f)ia-r]cr0e  TroXXwy  re  evSeets  ecrecrde. 

Here  the  vulgate  before  Bekker  had  been 
the  reading  of  the  inferior  Mss.,  while  X  has  the  aorist 
subjunctive.  Bekker  changed  to  ^rj^La-aia-Oe  and  he  was 
followed  by  Sauppe  and  Scheibe.  Cobet,  in  the  course  of 
his  restorations  of  '  Attic  Future '  forms  (  Var.Lect.  p.  177), 
corrected  the  old  vulgate  to  tyri<j>t,ei(r0e,  and  this  has  ever 
since  been  the  received  reading.  Although 
might  easily  engender  (palaeographically) 
still  probably  X  is  correct:  it  is  the  more  difficult  and 
expressive  reading,  and  it  is  also  correct  in  syntax.  The 
aorist  tense  is,  as  usual,  used  to  denote  simple  occurrence ; 
they  were  not  to  be  allowed  to  pass  a  single  advantageous 
decree.  The  future  tense  with  eVSeefc  denotes  the  continu- 
ing state  into  which  they  were  to  be  thrown.  How  carefui 
Lysias  is  in  his  use  of  the  aorist  in  the  dependent  moods 
has  already  been  shown  in  a  note  to  Lysias  16,  6  in  the 
appendix  to  my  edition.  As  for  the  combination  of  both 
subjunctive1  and  future  indicative  within  the  same  sen- 
tence in  object  clauses,  cf.  Xen.  Symp.  8,  25  (cited  by 
Goodwin,  M.  T.  339):  ov  yap  OTTW?  TrXetWo?  a£to? 
eirtfJieXeiTai,  a\\*  OTTO)?  auro?  cm  TrXetora  wpala 
So,  too,  in  Aeschines  3,  64  needless  levelling  has  been  at 
work  in  the  change  of  OTTW?  pr)  Treptfieivrjre  to  OTTO)?  /AT;  Trepi- 
(teveire  because  two  clauses  containing  future  indicatives 
follow.  Weber  (Entwick.  der  Absichtssatze,  p.  42)  gets 
rid  of  the  example  by  bowing  to  Weidner's  dictum  that, 

1  For  the  subjunctive  after  a  secondary  tense,  cf.  Lys.  I,  29  and  Aesch.  3, 
64,  below. 


II2  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

in  such  combinations  of  the  aor.  subjv.  and  fut.  ind., 
the  aorist  with  OTTO?  M  always  follows  and  never  pre- 
cedes. Weber  has,  however,  already  accepted  the  change 
to  <^r)(f>iei(r0e  in  Lysias  (p.  23),  and  later  on  (p.  86)  he 
reads,  with  Mehler,  yev^a-erai  in  the  passage  in  Xeno- 
phon. 

Or.  I2,6o:  fuarOao-dfJbevoi  Se  Trdvras  av6p<0Trow  eir  o\e0pq> 
TT)?  TToXeeo?  Kal  o\a?  Tro'Xet?  eirdyovrei  Kal  Te\€vro)vre<i  Aa/ce- 
Satfioviovs  teal  T(ov  a-vfjifjid^cov  OTTOCTOV*;  eSwamo  Trelo'at  KT\. 

Chapter  38  of  Aristotle's  Resp.  Ath.  makes  some  correc- 
tions necessary  in  previous  explanations  of  Lysias.  Hith- 
erto it  has  been  supposed  that  Tro'Xet?  referred  to  the  cities 
of  the  Spartan  allies,  who  (except  the  Boeotians  and 
Corinthians)  followed  Pausanias  when  his  jealousy  of 
Lysander  led  him  to  Athens  (Xen.  Hellen.  2,  4,  30).  But 
Aristotle  says  that  the  Ten1  who  succeeded  the  Thirty 
had  already  fallen  before  the  arrival  of  Pausanias,  and 
that  they  were  succeeded  by  a  second  Ten,  who  had  begun 
negotiations  for  peace  with  the  patriots  in  Peiraeus  before 
Pausanias  came.  (Lysias  and  the  other  authors  do  not 
mention  this  second  Ten.2)  The  forces,  therefore,  that 
aided  the  first  Ten  were  Lysander,  with  his  mercenaries 

1  Why  was  not  Eratosthenes  one  of  the  first  Ten  (§  55)  ?    Was  it  because 
Phidon  and  his  associates  were  not  really  of  the  party  of  Theramenes,  but  held 
still  a  middle  ground  between  this  party  and  that  of  Critias,  while  Eratosthe- 
nes belonged  to  Theramenes  out  and  out?     Or  was  it  because  Phidon  and 
his  colleagues  were  real  followers  of  the  Thirty,  chosen  by  a  trick  on  the 
people?    If  the  latter  is  the  true  explanation,  Eratosthenes,  as  a  known  oppo- 
nent of  the  advanced  party  in  the  Thirty,  would  not  have  been  chosen  into 
this  Ten. 

2  Their  existence,  however,  is  confirmed,  as  Sandys  says,  by  Isocr.  18,  6, 
'Plvuv,  eft  TWK  56cct  yevbfu-vos ;  for  Aristotle  mentions  Rhinon  as  the  leader  of 
the  second  Ten. 


NOTES  ON  LYSIAS  113 

(Xen.  Hellen.  2,  4,  28  f.,  in  number  1,000,  according  to 
Diod.  Sic.  14,  33),  and  his  brother  Libys  with  a  fleet 
(Xen.  ibid. ;  of  40  ships,  Diod.  Sic.  ibid.}.  Aristotle  does 
not  here  mention  either  of  these  by  name,  but  says  only 
that  the  first  Ten  were  helped  by  Callibius  and  the  Pelo- 
ponnesians  then  at  hand,  together  with  some  of  the  knights. 
Callibius  was  the  harmost,  sent  with  a  garrison  (of  700, 
according  to  Arist.  37)  to  maintain  the  Thirty.  By  IleXo- 
•jrovvrjcr iwv  rS>v  frapovrcov  Aristotle  may  mean  what  was 
left  of  this  garrison,  or  he  may  mean  Lysander  and  Libys 
with  their  forces,  or  both.  Lysias  is  evidently  speaking 
loosely  of  what  was  done  under  the  two  Tens.  For  /j,ia-6a>- 
o-dfjievoi  cannot  truthfully  be  used  of  the  second,  nor  TroXei? 
€TrdyovT€<;  of  the  first ;  while  the  words  AaKeSaifiovtovs  Kal 
TWV  a-v/j,fj,d^a)v  .  .  .  Trda-ai  belong  properly  to  the  expedi- 
tion of  Pausanias,  who  was  not  summoned  by  either  Ten 
so  far  as  we  know  (least  of  all  by  the  first !).  Finally,  the 
following  words,  ov  StaXXdgat  a\\'  aTroXeicrat  irapefftcevd- 
ZOVTO  can  refer  only  to  the  first  Ten,  the  second  hav- 
ing actually  begun  to  negotiate  before  Pausanias  arrived. 
Hence  the  second  may  well  be  included  under  the 
ayaBot  (Trap€(TK€vd£ovTO  rrjv  iro\iv  el  /AT)  81  avSpas  a 

These  avfyet,  according  to  the  editors  of  Lysias,  were 
the  avowed  or  secret  friends  of  Athens  in  Argos,  Thebes, 
Corinth  and  elsewhere,  as  well  as  all  who  were  jealous  of 
Lysander.  But  the  patriots  of  Peiraeus  too  are  meant, 
and  now  we  must  add  the  second  Ten  and  their  supporters 
in  the  aaru. 

Or.  12,  65  :  In  speaking  of  the  Trp6j3ov\oi  Lysias  says 
that  Theramenes  a-Tparrjyb^  VTT  avTwv  rjpeOrj ;  but  it  does 
not  appear  from  any  author  that  the  7rp6/3ov\oi  had  power 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


to  fill  any  of  the  offices.  Theramenes,  one  of  the  Four 
Hundred,  was  nominated  and  chosen  general  by  the  Four 
Hundred  themselves  ;  Arist.  ibid.,  30. 

Or.  12,  77  :  rot?  elpti^vo^  rpOTrois  VTT  CJJLOV  aurot?  atrto? 


On  the  unusual  order  editors  have  compared  Dem.  19, 
174,  rrjv  ftev  ypafaicrav  eTnaroK^v  VTT'  e/u,oO.  See  also  Froh- 
berger's  critical  note  in  his  large  edition.  Lysias  has  the 
substantive  following  the  participle  in  13,  43,  ra?  yeyevr)- 
fteVa?  <rv/j,(f)opa<s  rfj  Tro'Xet.  But  in  our  passage  I  think  that 
the  unusual  order  of  vir  e'/Aou  is  to  be  defended,  not  by  any 
general  principle,  but  that  it  is  here  rendered  necessary 
for  clearness  in  order  to  separate  avrois,  which  follows, 

from  T/307T049. 


Or.  1  6,  6:  eTreiBrj  yap  ^ar^X^ere,  etyrj^foaa-Qe  TOVS  <f>v\dp- 
aireveyKeiv    TOU?    iTnrevcravraf;,    iva    ra?    Karao-Tcio-eis 
Trap'  avr&v. 

Here  the  Ms.  has  avairpdrr^rai,  and  the  vulgate  before 
Scheibe  was  avaTrpaTrijre.  Of  recent  editors  only  Jebb  and 
Shuckburgh  retain  the  vulgate,  but  they  seem  to  me  to  be 
right,  for  it  is  near  the  reading  of  the  Ms.,  and  in  its  tense 
(G.,  M.  T.  87)  it  denotes  the  repeated  number  of  cases 
which  would  arise  after  the  report  of  the  phylarchs  had 
once  for  all  (cnreveyicelv,  aorist)  been  made.  Lysias  is  very 
careful  in  observing  this  distinction  between  the  present 
and  the  aor.  subjv.  or  opt.  The  final  clauses  cited  from 
him  by  Weber  (Entwick.  der  Absichtssatze,  p.  160  ff.)  all 
bear  out  the  rule  in  G.,  M.  T.  (save  the  only  apparent 


NOTES   ON   LYSIAS  1 15 

exceptions  in  which  etSrjre  and  e-n  la-rrjade  appear).  This 
is  particularly  well  illustrated  in  12,  72  and  32,  22,  where 
both  tenses  are  used  in  the  same  sentence.  Fuhr  reads 
avaTrpdgTjTe  (schedae  Brulart),  cf.  Harp.  s.  v.  Kardcrra- 
<m ;  so  Weber  himself,  p.  162.  Sauppe  and  Weidner, 
avcnrpdgaiTe. 

Or.  1 6,  7:  KairoL  pdSiov  rovro  jvcovai  on  avayicaiov  rfv 
T0t9  <f)V\dp%oi<;,  el  fj>rj  cnroBe^eiav  TOW  e^ozra?  ra?  /carcwTa- 
<m9,  ai/roi9  fyfuovaOai. 

Here  aurot?  is  dative,  in  spite  of  its  nearness  to  the 
inf.  because  of  $v\dpxoi<s,  which  belongs  closely  to  the 
impersonal  phrase  avay/calov  rjv ;  cf .  Andoc.  2,  7,  and  my 
note  in  Harvard  Classical  Sttidies,  ii,  p.  58.  Below, 
in  ev  etceivois  Be  row  iTTTreva-avras  avayicaiov  rjv  VTTO  T&V 
(f>v\dp%a)v  a7reve%dijvai,  the  participle  iTnreva auras  could 
not  be  dative,  in  spite  of  its  nearness  to  the  imper- 
sonal, on  account  of  the  preceding  e'/ceiW<?.  The  other 
instances  of  the  use  of  this  impersonal  in  Lysias  are  /AOI 
ea-ri  \eyeiv,  17,  I,  and  avayicatoTarov  ff.  in  12,  g,  where 
the  /LIOI  belongs  to  e'SoW.  As  for  the  impersonal  phrase 
with  avdyxr),  Kriiger's  remark  (6/>r.  62,  I,  Anm.  3)  that 
eo-ri  very  rarely  occurs  with  this  word,  holds  good 
for  Lysias.  'A.vdyicr)  occurs  twelve  times ;  with  eVrt 
twice,  13,  92  and  44  (but  in  the  latter  there  is  no  inf.); 
without  eo-rt' seven  times,  4,  8;  10,  5;  12,  i;  19,  I  and  23; 
22,  7;  26,  6;  with  r\v  twice,  13,  79;  33,  4;  with  yeyevrjrai 
once,  32,  i.  Only  hi  the  last  passage  is  the  dative 
used  with  the  phrase,  and  it  is  inserted  between  avdyKrj 
and  its  verb.  Cf.  the  usage  of  Andocides,  noted  in  the 
Studies,  ii,  p.  57. 


U6  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

Or.  16,  IO:  real  Trpbs  roi/?  aXXou?  aTravra?  ovreo? 
ware  fArjSeTrcaTTOTe  fioi  TT/JO?  eva  fiySev  eytc\r)[JLa  yeve'adai. 

The  phrase  /*ot  .  .  .  <yeve<r0cu  is  interpreted  by  the  com- 
mentators in  different  ways.  An  explanation  of  it  is  also 
offered  by  Liddell  and  Scott.  The  question  is  whether  it 
means,  '  No  person  has  ever  had  ground  of  complaint 
against  me/  or  '  I  have  never  had  ground  of  complaint 
against  anybody.'  This  question  can  be  settled  only  by  a 
comparison  of  other  passages  in  which  a  similar  phrase 
occurs. 

In  Sophocles  (Phil.  323)  e%et<?  ejK\rj/j,'  'Arpet8ai<},  the 
dative  of  the  person  is  evidently  used  in  the  sense  of 
'against.'  In  the  following  passages  the  same  dative 
occurs,  and  also  7rpo9  with  the  accusative  of  the  offended 
party  or  the  party  that  brings  the  ey/eX^/xa :  Xen.  Hellen. 
7,  4,  34,  KaraXi'Treiv  ei's  rbv  del  %povov  rot?  iraidlv  ey/cX-ima 
TOVTO  77/009  TOUS  0eovs.  Hyp.  Lye.  13,  p.  31  (Blass),  ovre 
alriav  Trovrfpav  ovSefiiav  TTWTTOT'  eXaySov,  ovr  ey/cX^/ia  fj-oi 
7T/309  ouSeVa  rwv  7ro\ir5)v  yeyove.  Lys.  IO,  23,  TIVO?  OVTOS 
e/iol  7T/309  v/ia9  ey/c\77/i,aT09;  (the  context  fixing  the  mean- 
ing). In  Dem.  I,  7,  eirei&r)  8*  e/c  rtov  TT/W?  eavroy?  ey/c\tjfjid- 
ro)v  purovffi,  (<3?i\i7nrov),  there  is  no  dative,  but  we  have 
the  same  TT/JO?  and  accusative;  so  in  Lys.  25,  23,  wo-Tre/o 
/iT/Sej/o?  e'7/cX?;/AaT09  TT/JO?  dXX^Xou?  yeyevrjfjievov. 

These  passages  show  that  the  phrase  in  Lys.  16,  10, 
should  be  rendered:  'there  has  never  been  any  ground 
of  complaint  at  all  against  me  on  the  part  of  a  single  soli- 
tary man.'  They  also  explain  Xen.  Cyr.  I,  2,  6, 
yap  &r)  Kal  iraurl  TT/OO?  dXX^Xow  &a"jrep  avSpdcriv 
This  passage  leads  the  editors  of  the  Lexicon  to  say  that 
1 1  have  a  ground  of  complaint  against  somebody '  could 


NOTES  ON  LYSIAS  1 1/ 

be  expressed  by  yfyverai  or  eo-rt  eyrcXyfjid  fioi  irpot  nva. 
In  support  of  this,  they  quote  Lys.  10,  23  (see  above), 
which,  rendered  as  they  propose,  could  not  possibly  make 
sense  with  the  context.  The  imaginary  sentence  would 
rightly  be  expressed :  yiyverai  &  eyK\ijfj,d  TIVI  TT/SO?  /*€.  In 
all  these  sentences  the  use  of  Tiyxfe  is  very  like  that  in 
Lys.  13,  75;  cf.  23,  13,  apfao-ftriTcov  pr)  TT/OO?  TOV  TroXe- 
Hapxov  elvai  01  ra?  8wca?.  But  Shuckburgh  goes  too  far  in 
rendering  16,  10,  fjujSe  ?r/309  eva,  by  'before  no  one  single 
magistrate.'  Although  Lutz  (die  Prapositionen  bei  den 
attischen  Rednern,  p.  160)  recognizes  this  local  use  of  TT/OO?, 
he  wrongly  states  that  with  ey/eX^/ia  it  has  the  sense  of 
'  against' ;  he  cites  no  example  to  prove  it  (p.  163).  For 
ejK\rjfj,a  meaning  'ground  of  complaint'  (not  the  mere 
written  bill  of  charges),  see  Meier  and  Schoemann,  Att. 
Process,  p.  195,  Lips. 


NOTES   ON   PERSIUS1 

1,13.     Scribimus  inclusi,  numeros  ille,  hie  pede  liber, 
Grande  aliquid. 

THE  general  idea  in  this  passage  is  clear  enough,  but 
critics  have  always  differed  in  their  views  of  the  style  in 
which  it  is  expressed.  In  this  note,  without  offering  much 
that  is  positively  new,  I  have  brought  together  the  princi- 
pal opinions  with  the  object  of  showing  that  nothing 
better  than  the  vulgate  has  been  suggested,  and  that  the 
vulgate  itself  is  intelligible. 

The  only  variant  from  the  traditional  text  is  numero  in 
an  inferior  manuscript  (65  of  Jahn).  But  on  the  meaning 
and  syntax  of  single  words,  questions  have  been  current 
from  an  early  time.  Thus  we  find  among  the  scholia : 
'  inclusi,  cura  remoti,  aut  metri  lege  coarctati ' ;  and 
'numeros  ille,  numeri  proprie  rhythmi  sunt,  nunc  vero 
metrum  significat.'  Before  considering  the  improve- 
ments (?)  which  have  been  suggested,  it  will  be  convenient 
to  see  whether  the  words,  taken  in  the  light  of  nature, 
mean  anything  as  they  stand. 

Scribimus  presents  no  difficulty.  For  inclusi,  '  shut  up ' 
(or,  with  Gifford,  '  Immured  within  our  studies '),  cf.  Virg. 
Aen.  2, 45,  hoc  inclusi  ligno  occultantur  Achivi  ;  6,614,  inclusi 
poenam  exspectant ;  Hor.  C.  3,  16,  I,  inclusam  Danaen  ;  4,  6, 

1  From  the  Harvard  Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  1896,  vii,  191-203. 

118 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  1 19 

13,  ille  non  inclusus  equo ;  Cic.  Rab.  Perd.  21,  inclusum 
atque  abditum  latere  in  occulto ;  Petr.  26,  cum  inclusi  (sc, 
in  a  room)  iacerent  (cf.  Ter.  Phorm.  744,  conclusam  hie 
habeo  uxorem  saevam).  But  why  '  shut  up  '  ?  One  of  the 
oldest  commentators,  Fontius  (1477),  notes  :  "  quod  secre- 
tis  in  locis  a  strepitu  ac  turba  remotis  scribitur  ";  and  his 
contemporary  Britannicus  (1481)  compared  Juv.  7,  28,  qui 
facts  in  parva  sublimia  carmina  cella.  Lubinus  in  1603 
added  Ov.  Tr.  I,  i,  41,  carmina  secessum  scribentis  et  otia 
quaerunt.  Casaubon  (1605)  cited  Quint.  I,  12,  12,  cum  ad 
stilum  secedet.  And  if  further  evidence  on  this  ancient 
practise  is  needed,  one  may  consult  Pliny's  description  of  his 
Zotheca  in  Ep.  2,  17,  21  and  24,  and  his  advice  to  Fuscus 
on  the  latter's  studies  in  secessu  7,  9,  i.  Instructive  too  is 
Cicero's  expression  in  Legg.  3,  14 :  ex  iimbraculis  erudito- 
rum  otioque ;  cf.  Hor.  E.  2,  2,  77,  scriptorum  chorus  omnis 
amat  nemus  etfugit  urbem.  Old  Fontius,  it  appears,  was 
on  the  right  track ;  not  so  Heinrich  in  his  note :  '  inclusi 
ist  verkehrt,  von  Monchen  ausgedacht,  die  glaubten,  man 
konne  nur  in  Zellen  eingeschlossen  schreiben.' 

We  pass  on  to  the  rest  of  the  sentence.  Again  the 
natural  way  is  (with  Jahn,  who  compares  Sen.  Ep.  79,  7, 
iam  cupis  grande  aliquid  et  par  prioribus  scribere)  to  take 
grande  aliquid  as  the  principal  object  of  scribimus.  In 
explanation  of  '  something  in  the  grand  style '  are  inserted 
two  sorts  of  literary  productions.  The  general  feeling,  as 
one  reads,  suggests  that  they  are  in  poetry  and  in  prose 
respectively ;  for  of  course  numeros  suggests  poetry  and/^v& 
equally  suggests  sermo  pedestris,  while  liber  suggests  soluta 
oratio  (for  liber  frequently  linked  as  a  synonym  to  solutus, 
cf.  Reid's  note  to  Cic.  Acad.  2, 105).  But  general  feeling  is 


12Q  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

often  a  dangerous  guide,  and,  as  everybody  knows,  nu- 
merus  does  not  really  mean  poetry  but  rhythm.  One  can- 
not write  rhythm,  say  the  critics,  since  it  is  in  rhythm  that 
one  writes.  Scribere  numeros  finds  no  support  in  tendere 
versum  (i,  65),  or  claudere  versum  (i,  93),  in  spite  of 
Hauthal  *  and  Kissel2;  for  versus  and  numerus  are  very 
different  words.  A  typical  example  of  the  proper  use  of . 
numerus  is  to  be  found  in  Ov.  Am.  i,  i,  i,  arma  gravi 
numero  violentaque  bella  parabam  edere ;  and  Persius 
knew  this  usage, — witness  i,  64;  92  ;  5,  123  ;  6,  3.  But, 
passing  over  this  objection  for  a  moment,  we  go  on  to  hie 
pede  liber.  This,  taken  naturally,  means  '  another  in 
prose,'  and  it  can  hardly  mean  anything  else.  Granting 
this,  numeros  ille,  harsh  though  it  may  be  (cf.  Jahn,  ed. 
1843,  p.  81),  must  mean  'one  in  poetry ' ;  and  we  must  say 
that  numeros  is  here  used  for  carmina  and  that  it  was  a 
new  usage,  originating  with  Persius  (unless  some  lost 
author  first  wrote  it).3  The  expression  is  far  from  defen- 

1  A.  Persii  F.  Sat.  I  ed.  et  castigata  ad  XXX  edd.  antiqq.,  p.  1 6. 
9  Specimen  Criticum,  p.  59. 
8  In  Virg.  Aen.  9,  776 

Crethea  Musarum  comitem,  cut  carmina  semper 
Et  citkarae  cordi  numerosque  intendere  nervis 

the  use  of  numeros  seems  to  be  at  least  a  step  in  the  direction  of  its  meaning 
in  Persius.  The  commentators,  however,  take  it  in  the  sense  of  '  rhythm.' 
Servius  says:  rhythmos  facere  intentione  nervorum;  nam  numeri  sunt 
rhythmi,  ut  numeros  metnini  si  verba  tenerem.  Hoc  ergo  dicit  secundum 
chordas  verba  componebat.  Ludewig's  note  is :  '  intendere,  steigern,  erhohen. 
Dem  Rhythmus  des  Liedes  durch  den  Klang  der  Saiten  grossere  Kraft  ver- 
leihen.  Nervis  ist  abl.  instr.'  Benoist :  '  sonos  edere  intentione  nervorum. 
Ordinairement  on  dit  intendere  nervos  numeris.'  And  so  in  effect  Conington, 
who  calls  it  a  mere  effort  after  variety.  But  is  it  not  possible  that  Virgil  was 
consciously  imitating  a  use  of  tvrdvw  in  Greek?  Cf.  Plat.  Prof.  p.  326  A 
K,  e/s  r4  KL0apl<r(MTa.  ivrelvorres. 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  121 

sible  as  a  model.  There  are  many  expressions  in  Persius 
which  the  stylist  will  not  defend.  But  I  for  one  am  not 
surprised  to  find  it  in  this  young  unformed  poet,  any  more 
than  I  am  surprised  to  find  intus  palleat  (3,  43  1  )  —  or  than 
I  wonder  at  blemishes  in  the  works  of  another  youthful 
poet,  —  Keats.  Persius,  in  beginning  the  verse,  was 
following  Hor.  E.  2,  I,  117,  scribimus  indocti  doctique  poe- 
mata  passim.  His  choice  of  phraseology  was  unfortunate 
but  the  result  seems  to  me  intelligible.  Not  so  to  all 
others.  And  doubtless  one  of  the  objections  to  the  above 
interpretation  has  always  been  the  feeling  that  inclusi  and 
liber  form  such  a  nice  contrast  that  inclusi  ought  to  be  taken 
with  numeros,  as  part  of  the  phrase  that  means  poetry,  just 
Sispede  and  liber  are  taken  together.  It  has  been  thought 
that  Persius  would  hardly  have  missed  so  happy  a  turn. 

Accordingly  Hand,  in  a  note  in  his  edition  of  Gronov's 
Diatribe,  i,  p.  277,  suggested  inclusi  numeros,  illhic  pede 
liber.  But  '  illhic '  (i.e.  illic)  is  only  ante-classical ;  and 
numeros  is  impossible  as  a  '  Greek  accusative.' 2  For  even 
if  nothing  else  were  to  be  said  against  it,  the  numeri 
themselves  '  include  '  or  '  hamper  '  (as  Jahn  remarks)  and 
are  not  themselves  the  sufferers.  Gronov  himself  had  sug- 
gested inclusi  numeros  illi,  hie  pede  liber  (Elenchus  Antidi- 
atribes,  ii,  p.  267),  upon  which  Hand's  emendation  was 
hardly  an  improvement.  Markland  (ad  Stat.  Silv.  4,  5,  67) 
read  inclusus  numeris?  and  before  him  Cruceus  (Antitfi- 

1  See  Classical  Review,  1889,  p.  314. 

2  It  seems  likely  that  Persius  never  used  this  construction.    Burmeister, 
Observationes  Persianae,  p.   19,  cites  pellem  succinctus,  5,  140,  as  the  sole 
occurrence  ;   but  the  two  words  have  no  syntactical  connection. 

3  After   what   has   been   said,    Passow's    combination    inclusus    numeros 
(adopted  by  Heinrich  and  Macleane)  calls  for  nothing  more  than  mention. 


122  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

atribe,  ii,  p.  86)  inclusi  numeris.  This  ablative  has  met 
with  some  approval  (see  Pretor's  note),  and  '  hampered  by 
rhythm' J  is  easy  enough  to  understand.  But  the  very  sim- 
plicity of  the  correction  is  against  its  acceptance  when  we 
consider  the  obstinacy  of  the  tradition,  both  in  text  and 
scholia,  in  favor  of  numeros,  and  the  utter  lack  of  reasons 
for  corruption  from  numeris  to  the  '  lectio  difficilior.'  Some, 
too,  would  say  that  the  very  nicety  of  the  balance  between 
inclusi  numeris  and  hie pede  liber  is  just  the  sort  of  thing 
that  Persius,  the  lover  of  the  strange  and  unexpected,  strove 
to  avoid.  Emendation,  therefore,  has  done  nothing  for 
this  passage,  and  the  vulgate  must  stand. 

1,14.     Grande  aliquid  quod  pulmo  animae  praelargus  an- 
helet. 

Here  a  has  quo,  and  so  four  or  five  inferior  manuscripts 
cited  in  Jahn  '43,  while  P  and  the  others  have  quod.  Of 
the  editions,  the  Paris  of  1472  (see  Hauthal,  ibid.,  pp.  xxi, 
17),  Jahn  of  '51  and  '68  and  Bucheler  of  '86  have  quo.  In 
all  the  others,  including  Jahn  of  '43  and  Bucheler  of  '93, 
quod  is  found.  No  editor  of  consequence  has  thought 
the  matter  worth  a  note  save  Gildersleeve,  and  he  merely 
remarks  "quo  is  not  so  vigorous."  But  recently  Johann 
Bieger,2  in  his  general  defence  of  cod.  P,  supports  quod 
here  by  new  arguments  (p.  27).  He  calls  attention  to 
Persius's  fondness  for  the  use  of  the  accusative  with  in- 
transitive verbs  instead  of  the  ablative  of  cause.  He  cites : 

1  Cf.  Liv.  24,  8.  7  impcratorem  .  .  .  nullis  neque  temporis  nee  iuris  inclu- 
sum  angustiis. 

2  In  his  valuable  thesis  De  Auli  Persii  Flacci  Codice  C  (  =  P  of  Bucheler) 
recte  aestimando.    This  work  is  already  of  great  authority  in  the  determination 
of  questions  of  the  text  of  Persius  ;  witness  Bucheler's  third  edition  ('93)  in 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  123 

I,  124  iratum  Eupolidem  .  .  .  palles  (for  Eupolide  irato  lecto  palks). 

3,    43  palleat  infelix  quod  proximo,  nesciat  uxor. 

3,    59  oscitat  hesternum. 

3,    85  hoc  est  quod  palles. 

5,184  recutitaque  sabbata  palles. 

In  not  a  few  of  these  passages  he  says  that  the  metre 
forbids  us 1  to  think  that  the  ablative  has  been  changed  to 
the  accusative  by  scribes.  In  view  of  this  habit  of  Persius 
he  concludes  that  we  cannot  read  quo  here ;  further,  that, 
if  we  read  it,  we  must  clumsily  supply  quo  recitato  or  quo 
in  recitato. 

But  Bieger  does  not  seem  to  see  that  of  his  five  exam- 
ples two  (i,  124;  3,  85)  are  cognate  accusatives  (so  Gilder- 
sleeve  and  Conington).  There  is  nothing  at  all  surprising 
in  this  construction,  whether  the  verb  be  transitive  or  not. 
Omitting  his  example  with  oscitat,  the  other  two  (3,  43  and 
5,  184)  are  cases  of  verbs  of  emotion,  which,  intransitive 
in  English,  are  transitive  as  well  as  intransitive  in  Latin. 
Thus  used,  palleo,  for  instance,  has  to  be  rendered  'be 
pale  at ' ;  doleo,  '  grieve  for,'  etc.,  and  the  category  is  too 
common  to  need  illustration  here.  But  Bieger's  view  of 
the  meaning  of  palleo  as  used  by  Persius  seems  different ; 
for  he  goes  on  to  compare  anhelo  with  the  accusative  in 
the  verses  quoted  by  Cic.  N.  D.  2,  112,  gelidum  de  pectore 
frigus  anhelans  .  .  .  Capricornus;  also  Lucan  6,  92,  rabiem 
anhelant,  Mart.  6,  42,  14,  siccos  pingu is  onyx  anhelat  aestus. 
Yet  in  all  three  we  clearly  have  nothing  but  cognate  accu- 
satives. His  argument,  therefore,  does  not  help  us  much 

which,  influenced  by  Bieger's  arguments,  he  seems  in  many  instances  to  follow 
P  simply  because  it  is  P. 

1  The  metre  interferes  in  i,  124  and  5,  184. 


124 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 


towards  a  choice  between  quo  and  quod  in  our  passage. 
Nor  does  it  illustrate  fairly  the  syntactical  usages  of  Per- 
sius  with  this  class  of  verbs.  For,  to  judge  by  Bieger,  one 
would  think  that  Persius  had  the  habit  of  using  the  accu- 
sative (and  that,  too,  not  the  cognate  accusative)  with 
them.  But  compare  rideo  used  with  the  ablative  in  3,  86, 
and  with  the  cognate  accusative  in  5,  190;  gaudeo  with 
the  ablative  in  6,  63,  cognate  accusative  in  I,  132;  impal- 
lesco  with  the  ablative  in  5,  62.  It  is  clear  that  Persius 
cannot  be  said  to  have  had  a  habit  in  this  matter.  Hence 
it  is,  so  far  as  Bieger's  arguments  go,  still  an  open  ques- 
tion whether  quo  or  quod  is  the  right  reading ;  and  hence 
Bieger  is  not  justified  in  confidently  counting  (p.  27  f.) 
this  passage  as  one  of  the  eight  in  which  P  is  far  superior 
to  a.1  This  conclusion  affects  only  Bieger's  line  of  argu- 
ment and  does  not  mean  that  Persius  did  not  write  quod. 
He  may  have  done  so,  and  it  doubtless  is,  as  Gildersleeve 
says,  the  more  vigorous  reading.  But  whether  the  poet 
always  chose  the  more  vigorous  way  of  putting  a  thing  is 
another  question,  into  which  I  do  not  venture  now  to  enter. 
I  should  prefer  to  defend  quod  on  two  grounds  :  i )  because 
the  ablative  of  cause  is  never,  so  far  as  I  know,  found  any- 
where with  anhelo  unless  here ;  2)  because  the  accusative 
is  not  infrequently  found  with  this  verb.  For  to  the  cog- 
nate accusatives  cited  above  may  be  added  Lucr.  4,  864, 
Auct.  ad  Her.  4,  68,  Cic.  Cat.  2,  I,  Stat.  Theb.  11,  7.  So 
far  is  the  accusative  from  being  unusual  that  dictionaries 
treat  the  verb  as  a  real  transitive  as  well  as  intransitive, 

1  On  the  same  principle  his  preference  for  tram  scintillant,  iii,  1 1 6,  another 
of  his  eight  passages,  could  be  attacked ;  but  there  now  seems  to  be  some 
doubt  about  the  real  reading  of  P  here  (see  Biicheler's  third  edition). 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  125 

assigning  to  it  the  meaning  'emit.'  This  finds  its  best 
support  in  Stat.  Theb.  n,  241,  haec  trepido  vix  intellectus 
anhelat ;  cf.  also  Cic.  de  Or.  3,  41,  verba  .  .  .  inflata  et  quasi 
anhelata,  Ov.  H.  12,  15,  anhelatos  ignes  (so  F.  4,  492).  If 
this  view  be  adopted,  Conington  rightly  translates  '  to  be 
panted  forth  by  the  lungs  with  a  vast  expenditure  of 
breath.' 

i,  60.     Nee  linguae  quantum  sitiat  cants  Apula  tantae. 

On  sitiat,  Bieger  (p.  2)  remarks :  *  coniunctivus  nullo 
modo  satis  explicandus.'  But  the  usage,  which  has  passed 
without  note  in  the  editions,  is  merely  potential  and  it 
is  sufficiently  illustrated  by  Hor.  S.  i,  6,  127,  pransus 
non  avide,  quantum  interpellet  inani  Ventre  diem  durare ; 
Mart.  12,  83,  4,  dicentem  tumidas  in  hydrocelas  Quan- 
tum nee  duo  dicerent  Catulli ;  Juv.  5,  69,  solidae  iam 
mucida  frusta  farinae,  Quae  genuinum  agitent.  Bieger's 
remark,  however,  is  part  of  a  general  attack  which  he 
makes  (p.  2  f.)  upon  the  versification  of  Persius,  and  which 
he  ends  with  the  words :  '  huius  poetae  arti  metricae  pa- 
rum  perfectae  atque  elegant!.'  Without  disputing  for  the 
moment  this  conclusion,  one  may  examine  the  grounds 
upon  which  it  is  based. 

Biicheler,  in  his  well-known  article  in  the  Rh.  Mus.  (xli, 
p.  454  ff.),  observed  that  where  the  two  recensions  repre- 
sented by  a  and  P  agree,  we  must  follow  their  tradition 
(save  in  a  few  cases  of  mere  orthographical  blunders)  in  all 
except  in  five  passages  (i,  97 ;  in  ;  2,  19;  3,  66;  5,  134). 
Bieger  holds  that  in  two  of  these  five  the  tradition  is  not 
at  fault.  In  each  of  these  the  question  at  issue  is  one  of 
metre.  In  3,  66, 


126  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

discite,  o  miseri,  et  causas  cognoscite  rerum, 

and  in  5,  134, 

et  quid  agam  ?    rogas  ?    en  saperdas  advehe  Ponto, 

he  believes  that  the  hiatus  in  the  one  and  the  use  of  rogas 
as  a  pyrrhic  in  the  other  were  blunders  which  Persius  was 
likely  to  have  committed.  He  proceeds  to  prove  his  the- 
ory by  criticizing  ten  other  passages  as  being  metrically 
unsound.  Mr.  G.  R.  Scott  in  a  notice  of  Bieger's  thesis 
(Classical  Review,  1890,  xiv,  p.  467  f.)  briefly  remarked 
that,  in  some  of  these,  grammar,  not  metre,  had  been  sac- 
rificed. Let  us  look  at  them  in  detail. 

In  four  of  the  ten  (2,  13;  2,  10;  3,  9;  5,  57)  the  metre 
does  seem  to  limp.  But  in  the  first,  2,  13, 

inpello,  expungam,  nam  et  est  scabiosus  et  acrff 

codd.  a  and  P  do  not  agree.  Only  a  has  the  verse  as  just 
quoted,  while  P  has  the  impossible  nam  est  which  p  (the 
second  hand  of  P)  corrected  to  namque  est,  the  reading  of 
many  other  manuscripts  and  of  the  vulgate.  Such  a  pas- 
sage cannot  be  accepted  in  evidence  against  the  poet.  In 

2,  10, 

o  si 

Ebulliat  patruus,  praeclartim  funus,  et  o  si, 

not  only  are  the  manuscripts  again  at  odds  (P  reading 
ebulliat,  a  p  ebullit,  and  inferior  manuscripts  ebullet*}, 

1  There  is  really  no  essential  difference  in  meaning  between  bullo  and 
bullio.  The  former  occurs  (see  Neue,  Formenl?  iii,  p.  291)  five  times  in- 
transitively, of  the  bubbling  of  liquids  (Calp.  I,  n  ;  Plin.  N.  H.  9,  18;  18, 
359 ;  28,  68 ;  Cato,  R.  R.  105,  i).  The  latter  occurs  about  as  often  in  the 
same  sense  (Pers.  3,  34;  Apic.  8,  §  334;  345,  etc.  ;  Vitr.  8,  3.  2),  and  in  a 
metaphorical  sense  in  Apul.  Met.  10,  24,  p.  250,  34  ne  bulliret  indignations 
and  in  Hieron.  ad  Eustach.  p.  236,  i,  i  libidine  incendia  bulliebant.  But 
when  we  come  to  the  compound  verb  we  find  a  different  state  of  things. 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  127 

but  also  modern  authorities  on  metre  are  not  agreed  alto- 
gether to  condemn  such  a  synezesis  as  ebulliat.1  Here 
again  therefore  we  must  hesitate  before  accusing  Persius 
too  harshly.  The  third  passage  is  3,  9,  in  which  we  find 
the  verb  rudere  with  a  long  vowel,  contrary  to  all  the 
extant  usage  except  in  the  imitation  of  this  verse  in  Auson. 
Ep.  (5)  76,  3  (p.  313  Peiper).  But  does  this  necessarily 
mean  that  Persius  committed  a  downright  metrical  blun- 
der? Is  it  likely  that  a  man  of  his  education  and  sur- 
roundings would  not  have  known  how  to  pronounce  a 
word  so  common  as  rudere  must  have  been  ?  If  he  blun- 
dered, is  it  probable  that  Cornutus,  in  correcting  his  pupil's 
manuscript,  would  have  suffered  so  obvious  an  error  to 
stand  as  a  mark  for  ridicule  ?  Hardly.  What  is  to  be 
said  when  we  find  strtgibus  in  Plautus,  but  strigibus  in 
Ovid  and  Propertius, — coturnixvn.  Plautus  and  Lucretius, 
but  cSturnix  in  Ovid  and  Juvenal,  — glomus  in  Lucretius, 
\>\&glomus  in  Horace?2  That  either  of  these  poets  made 
a  blunder  ?  Rather  that  each  was  following  the  pronun- 
ciation in  vogue  in  his  own  day.  Now  what  are  the  facts 

Only  ebullio,  not  ebullo,  is  found  in  the  authors  outside  of  Persius,  and  it  is 
used  metaphorically  (cf.  Sen.  Apoc,  4  ;  2  ;  Petr.  42 ;  62 ;  Cic.  Tusc.  3,  42 ; 
Fin.  5,  80  ;  Apul.  Met.  2,  30,  p.  128  ;  Tert.  Idol.  3  ;  cf.  ad  Scap.  3).  When 
we  find  the  phrase  animam  ebullire  in  Seneca  and  in  Petronius,  the  odds  are 
heavily  in  favor  of  the  same  verb  in  Persius.  But  of  course  there  is  no  intrin- 
sic reason  why  ebullo  may  not  also  have  been  in  use,  although  we  do  not  find 
it  in  the  remains  of  Latin  literature. 

1  See  Christ,  Metrik?  p.  32 ;  Miiller,  de  R.  M?,  p.  299  ff. ;  Lachmann 
ad  Lucr.  3,  917.  Instances  of  synezesis  in  Persius  are  pituita,  2,  57; 
tenuia,  5,  93;  deinde,  4,  8 ;  5,  143.  Note  also  the  Pompeian  verse  (C/Z. 

iv,  813), 

Otiosis  locus  non  hie  est.     discede  morator. 

2Cf.  Stolz,  Hist.  Gramm.  der  Lot.  Spr.,  i,  p.  226;  Muller,  de  R.  M.* 
p.  436  & 


I28  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

about  rudere  f  Virgil  and  Ovid  have  u  short,  while  Per- 
sius  has  it  long.  Between  the  deaths  of  Ovid  and  Persius 
there  are  only  two  years  less  than  there  were  between  the 
deaths  of  Lucretius  and  Horace,  —  forty-five  in  the  one 
case,  forty-seven  in  the  other.  This  is  ample  time  for  the 
pronunciation  to  have  changed.1  The  fourth  passage  is 

5    57 

hie  campo  indulge^  hunc  alea  decoquit,  ilk. 

Here  Bieger  admits  that  ictus  and  caesura  (penthemimeral 
at  that!)  are  some  excuse  for  -et ;  and  well  he  may,  par- 
ticularly considering  that  this  may  be  a  survival  of  original 
long  -et ;  cf.  subiit,  2,  55,  and  my  note  in  the  Classical 
Review,  1889,  xiii,  p.  10.  This  is  hardly  the  sort. of  thing 
to  charge  up  severely  against  one  who  was  such  an  imi- 
tator of  Horace,  who  has  the  license  a  dozen  times.  It  is 
unlikely  that  Persius  would  have  observed  the  fact  that  the 
license  is  not  admitted  in  the  Epodes  and  Epistles  ;  enough 
for  him  that  it  was  employed  by  most  of  the  great  poets 
from  Ennius  down.  It  is  scarcely  to  be  called  a  metrical 
fault,  but  it  was  perhaps  an  error  of  taste  ;  for  the  license 
began  to  find  disfavor  under  Augustus  and  it  is  almost 
obsolete  in  the  Silver  Age.2 

In  the  remaining  six  of  Bieger's  ten  passages  the  diffi- 
culties are  not  in  themselves  metrical  but  syntactical. 
Scott,  as  we  have  seen  (p.  126),  felt  that  Bieger's  citation 
of  these  did  nothing  towards  proving  his  point,  but  Bieger 
would  probably  contend  that  the  poet  could  not  swing  the 

1  It  may  also  be  thought  that  Virgil  and  Ovid  were  following  the  '  dic- 
tionary '  pronunciation,  Persius  that  of  everyday  life  ;  cf.  Quint.  1,6,21  and  27. 

2  On  it,  see  Christ,  Metrik?  p.  200 ;  Muller,  de  R.  M.2,  p.  396  ff.,  especially 
p.  405  ft    The  latter  indeed  admits  metuts  in  vi,  26,  but  here  P  reads  metuas. 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  1 29 

metre  freely  enough,  being  so  hampered  by  its  require- 
ments that  he  forced  the  laws  of  language  in  his  anxiety 
to  fulfil  the  bare  necessities  of  the  metre.  The  first  two 
cases  occur  in  the  same  sentence,  3,  28  f., 

an  deceat  pulmonem  rumpere  ventis 
Stemmate  quod  Tusco  ramum  millesime  duds 
Censoremve  tuum  vel  quod  trabeate  salutas  f 

With  this  passage  Bieger  might  have  compared  I,  123, 

audaci  quicumque  adflate  Cratino 
Iratum  Eupolidem  praegrandi  cum  sene  palles. 

For  all  three  belong  together.  On  the  last,  Gildersleeve 
remarks :  '  Persius,  like  some  other  Roman  poets,  goes 
beyond  reasonable  bounds  in  the  use  of  the  vocative  as 
predicate.  The  Greeks  were  cautious  and  in  Virgil  the 
vocative  may  be  detached  and  felt  as  such,1  but  not  here, 
nor  in  3,  28.'  The  examples  generally  cited  here  in  sup- 
port of  Persius's  usage  (Virg.  Aen.  2,  283 ;  9,  485  ;  Hor. 
S.  2,  6,  20;  Tib.  i,  7,  53)  do  not,  with  one  exception 
(Juv.  6,  277)  supply  us  with  anything  so  harsh  as  Persius's 
uses  of  the  vocative  as  predicate  in  a  relative  clause. 
Bieger's  next  case  also  occurs  in  the  same  sentence.  It  is 
the  collocation  -ve  .  .  .  vel,  in  support  of  which,  in  spite  of 
the  pages  that  have  been  written,  nothing  satisfactory  has 
been  said.2  If  the  text  is  correct  (a  and  P  do  not  here 

1  So  it  may  in  Pers.  4,  124. 

2  The  fullest  note  is  to  be  found  in  HauthaPs  edition  of  1837,  p.  188  ff. 
Biicheler  in  his  third  edition  thinks  it  worth  while  to  explain  thus :    "  vel 
quod  censor  tibi  cognatus  est  vel  quod  ipse  es  eques."     This  is  far  from  being 
new,  for  though  Gildersleeve  ascribes  it  to  Pretor  and  Stocker  to  Farnaby,  and 
though  both  Pretor  and  Farnaby,  like  Biicheler  and,  years  before,  Lubinus,  as 
well  as  J.  B.  Mayor  {Classical  Review,  1888,  xii,  p.  85),  put  it  forth  without 
a  hint  that  it  was  not  original,  the  fact  is  that  it  is  the  explanation  of  Valentinus 
(1578)  and  that  the  suggestion  for  it  comes  from  Badius  Ascensius  (1499). 


130 


ADDRESSES   AXD   ESSAYS 


agree)  the  superfluous  particle  was  tucked  in  carelessly  as 
the  needed  extra  syllable.  The  fourth  of  Bieger's  six  is 
5,  1 14,  where  he  says  of  liberque  ac  sapiens :  '  absurdum  est 
•que  .  .  .  ac,  quoniam  hoc  toto  loco  ostendere  studet  poeta 
idem  esse  sapientem  fieri  et  liberum.'  The  sequence  -que 
.  .  .  ac  (or  atq2te)  is  certainly  rare  though  it  is  found  (the 
grammars  and  the  dictionary  to  the  contrary)  earlier  than 
Virgil  in  poetry  and  Livy  in  prose;  cf.  Lucr.  5,  31  and 
Munro's  note,  also  Varro  ap.  Non.  p.  75,  20.  But  Bieger's 
line  of  criticism  might  as  well  be  applied  to  Virg.  Georg.  I, 
182,  saepe  exigmis  mus  Sub  terris  posuitque  domos  atque 
horrea  fecit.  Or  the  idea  in  ac  may  be  '  and  so,'  '  and 
thus,'  in  both  passages.  A  better  passage  for  Bieger's 
purpose  would  have  been  2,  ^2,frontemque  atque  uda  labella, 
where  the  rare  combination  seems  certainly  to  be  used  for 
the  metre.  Bieger's  fifth  passage  is  i,  60,  wherein  the 
subjunctive  sitiat  has  already  been  defended  (p.  125).  His 
sixth  is  4,  2,  where  the  '  historical '  present  to  Hit  in  a  rela- 
tive clause  is  exceedingly  harsh,  in  spite,  as  Gildersleeve 
remarks,  of  all  the  examples  and  all  the  commentators. 
But  this  is  no  reason  for  saying  that  Persius  had  not 
facility  in  writing  verse,  unless  we  are  to  bring  the  same 
charge  against  Virgil  and  Horace  (see  the  examples  cited 
by  Jahn). 

Our  examination  of  the  ten  passages  cited  by  Bieger 
shows  that,  whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  poet's  taste  in 
the  choice  of  language,  there  is  very  little  in  them  upon 
which  to  base  against  him  a  wholesale  accusation  of  met- 
rical ignorance  or  even  of  infelicity.1  Consequently  the 

1  I  am,  however,  far  from  asserting  the  converse,  that  Persius  was  a  skilful 
metrician.  Witness,  for  example,  his  harsh  elisions  of  monosyllables  (i,  51; 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  I$I 

two  passages  which  led  to  Bieger's  argument  are  not  to  be 
defended  on  the  ground  which  he  takes.  They  were  3,  66 
and  5,  134.  For  the  hiatus  in  the  former, 

discite,  o  miseri,  et  causas  cognoscite  rerum, 

there  is  no  exact  parallel.  Passages  containing  proper 
names  should  not  be  taken  into  account,  nor  those  in 
which  ictus  falls  on  the  unelided  syllable.  It  seems 
strange  to  cite  Virg.  Eel.  2,  53,  addam  cerea  pruna:  honos 
erit  huic  quoque porno,  and  Aen.  I,  405,  et  vera  incessu patuit 
dea.  ille  ubi  matrem,  and  hence  to  believe  that  on  account 
of  the  pause  in  the  sense  after  discite  the  hiatus  may 
stand.  For  there  is  certainly  as  much  of  a  pause  after 
miseri ;  and  yet  that  word  is  elided,  in  spite  of  the  ictus. 
With  Miiller(<£  R.  M?,  p.  371)  and  Bucheler  (Rh.  Mus., 
I.  £.)  I  believe  that  this  hiatus  is  not  to  be  left  in  our  text, 
and  that  we  must  take  our  choice  between  the  readings  of 
the  inferior  manuscripts  disciteque  or  discite  et,  as  being, 
either  of  them,  more  like  Persius  than  the  io  of  Earth  or 
the  vos  of  Guyet. 

We  come  finally  to  a  more  vered  question,  5,  134.     Here 

a  P  give 

et  quid  agam  ?  rogas  ?  en  saperdas  advehe  Ponto. 

The  scholiast  too  seems  to  have  read  rogas,  which  must,  of 
course,  be  taken  as  a  pyrrhic.  The  inferior  manuscripts 
help  us  out  of  the  difficulty  with  rogitas  saperdas  or  rogitas 
en  saperdam.  The  reading  rogitas  is  the  vulgate,  found 
(before  1886)  in  all  the  editions  that  I  have  examined 
except  in  the  Venetian  of  1482.  But  in  this,  the  commen- 
tary (by  Fontius)  has  rogitas  for  a  lemma,  so  that  rogas  in 

66 ;  131  ;  4,  14  ;  33)  and  his  admission  of  elisions  in  the  fifth  foot  (14  times, 
see  Eskuche,  Rh.  Mus.,  1890,  xlv,  p.  236  ff.,  385  ff.). 


132  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

the  text  may  be  a  misprint.  Biicheler  (Rh.  Mus.  I.  c.  and 
in  his  apparatus  to  his  edition  of  1886  where  he  printed 
rogas)  suggested  rtigan,  comparing  min,  I,  2  and  vm,1  6,  63. 
But  in  his  third  edition  (1893)  he  has  this  note  on  rogas : 
'num  corripuit  poeta  rogas  more  prisco  ac  volgari?  cf. 
scholion.'  Why  not  ?  The  verse  is  highly  dramatic,  — 
divided,  in  fact,  between  two  speakers.  And  rogas  seems  to 
belong  to  the  class  of  iambic  words  which  were  frequently 
used  in  verse  as  pyrrhics  because  people  pronounced  them 
so  in  everyday  conversation.2  The  principle  is  familiar 
enough.  We  find  it  working  in  Persius,  for  example,  in 
putd,  4,  9;  videsis,  I,  108  ;  cf.  void,  5,  84,  87;  veto,  I,  112; 
qneo,  5,  133.  When,  for  example,  we  find  ave  in  Ov.  Am. 
2,  6,  62  we  know  that  we  have  not  to  do  with  any  mere 
metrical  license,  for  Quintilian  (i,  6,  21)  expressly  tells  us 
that  the  word  was  universally  pronounced  with  2.  But  the 
shortening  of  the  ultima  was  not  confined  to  iambic  words ; 
cf.  accedo,  6,  55  ;  nescid,  3,  88 ;  dixero,  Hor.  5.  I,  4,  104; 
mentis,  S.  I,  4,  93 ;  quomodo,  S.  I,  9, 43  ;  ergo,  Ov.  H.  5,  59 ; 
salve",  possibly  in  Mart,  u,  108,  4.  But  it  is  true  that 
before  final  s  the  long  quantity  was  very  persistent  and 
instances  of  shortening  are  rare.  We  find  mantis,  Plaut. 
Mil.  325;  habte,  Aul.  187;  possibly  virgines,  Enn.  Ann. 
102  M.,  and  Plaut.  Pers.  845  (unless  we  take  it  as  virgnes 
in  both).  The  phenomenal paltis  in  Hor.  A.  P.  65  is  much 

1  Here  P  has  vis. 

2  Cf.  Lindsay,    The  Latin  Language,  p.  210,  'This  shortening  was  not  a 
mere  metrical  license  but  reflected   the   actual  pronunciation,'  and   Keller, 
Grammatische  Aufsatze,  p.  264,  who  thinks  that  the  ''rule  '  of  breves  breviantes 
worked,  chiefly  at  any  rate,  only  in  familiar  words  which  were  in  constant 
use.     Thus  he  distinguishes  between  doml, '  at  home,'  and  the  true  genitive 
d~bmi. 


NOTES  ON  PERSIUS  133 

debated.  Of  actual  -ds  we  have  enic&s,  Plaut.  Rud.  944 ; 
inton&s  and  claudds  in  hexameters  in  an  inscription  of  the 
third  century,  CIL  viii,  4635.  Doubtless  other  instances 
might  be  picked  up.  But  for  actual  rog&s  I  know  only 
CIL  i,  1454,  on  one  of  the  sortes: 

Qur  petis  postempus  consilium  f  quod  rogas,  non  est, 

and  on  a  hexameter  (?)  like  this  little  can  be  based.  In 
Plaut.  Bacch.  980  a  foot  is  lacking,  and  Ritschl  inserted 
hem  before  rogas.  Still,  I  think  one  can  scarcely  doubt 
that  many  people  said  rog&s.  The  question  is  whether  it 
is  likely  that  Persius  would  have  admitted  it  into  his  verse. 
When  I  think  of  the  shortenings  which  he  did  admit,  and 
reflect  how  many  words  and  phrases  there  are  in  his  650 
verses  which  seem  to  be  taken  directly  from  the  dialect  of 
the  people,  from  slang,  and  even  from  a  lower  language 
still,  I  am  strongly  tempted  to  believe  that  he  wrote  rog&s 
here.1  On  the  other  hand,  the  reading  rogitas  of  the  infe- 
rior manuscripts  cannot  be  impeached  (as  some  have  at- 
tempted) on  the  ground  that  this  verb  is  a  frequentative 
and  therefore  out  of  place  here.  Passage  after  passage 
might  be  cited,  from  Plautus  (e.g.  Pseud.  1163)  down,  in 
which  rogito  serves  as  a  mere  synonym  of  rogo.  Further, 
a  glance  over  Jahn's  index  will  show  Persius's  fondness 
for  verbs  of  the  frequentative  formation.  Kiister  (de  A. 
Persii  FL  elocutione  quaestiones,  p.  6)  cites  eleven  verbs 

1  To  speak  only  of  words,  not  phrases,  cf.  agaso,  5,  76;  baro,  5,  138; 
cackinno,  I,  12 ;  calo,  5,  95  ;  palpo,  5,  176 ;  aristae,  3,  115  ;  bullire,  3,  34; 
canthus,  5,  71  ;  centussis,  5,  191  ;  cevere,  I,  87  ;  cirrati,  I,  29  ;  ebulliat,  2, 
10 ;  exossatus,  6,  52 ;  gurgulio,  4,  38  ;  inmeiare,  6,  73 ;  iunix,  2,  47 ; 
lallare,  3,  18  ;  mamma,  3,  1 8  ;  pappare,  3,  17  ;  patrare,  \,  1 8 ;  popa,  6,  74 ; 
saperda,  5,  134;  sartago,  I,  80;  scloppw,  5,  13;  tressis,  5,  76;  trossitlus,  I, 
82 ;  tucceta,  2,  42. 


134 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 


occurring  in  twenty  passages.  In  but  a  few  of  them  can 
the  real  meaning  of  the  frequentative  be  distinguished. 
Against  rogitas,  then,  we  can  say  only  that  it  is  the  easier 
reading,  found  in  inferior  manuscripts. 

2,  I.    Hunc,  Macrine,  diem  nnmera  meliore  lapillo, 
Qui  tibi  labentis  apponet  candidus  annos. 

Here  P  and  half  a  dozen  of  the  inferior  manuscripts 
have  apponet,  the  variant  apponat  stands  in  G  by  a  correc- 
tion, and  all  the  other  manuscripts  (including  a)  have 
apponit.  This  is  one  of  the  '  twenty  passages  in  which 
Bieger  (p.  48)  believes  that  P  is  inferior  to  a ;  he  thinks 
apponet  a  pure  blunder.  This  is  a  strange  verdict,  particu- 
larly as  coming  from  one  whose  me'tier  it  is  to  find  the 
best  in  P  whenever  he  possibly  can.  It  seems  as  if  Bieger 
must  have  been  influenced  by  tradition ;  for  it  is  a  fact 
that  the  future  apponet  had,  when  Bieger  wrote,  been 
adopted  by  only  two  editors  of  consequence  —  Pithou  in 
1590  (naturally,  as  he  was  the  owner  of  P)  and  Schrevel  in 
his  edition  of  1648  and  later  reprints.  In  1893  it  was 
revived  by  Biicheler  in  his  latest  edition,  possibly  on  the 
principle  that  it  is  the  reading  of  P  though  rejected  by 
P's  defender. 

I  think  it  the  right  reading.  For  i)  it  is  undoubtedly 
the  '  lectio  difficilior ' ;  2)  it  is  supported  by  such  futures 
as  are  found  in  relative  clauses  like  Hor.  C.  I,  9,  15,  quern 
fors  dierum  cumque  dabit  lucro  Appone,  Mart.  2,  32,  8,  sit 
liber,  dominus  qui  volet  esse  metis,  and  Pers.  1,91,  verum  nee 
node  paratum  Plorabit,  qui  me  volet  incurvasse  querella. 


ON  THE  WORD   PETITOR1 

THE  warning  \ha.\.  petitor  in  the  sense  of  'candidate  for 
office '  does  not  occur  in  classical  prose  has  long  stood 
in  the  principal  authorities  on  usage.  Thus,  in  the  sixth 
edition  of  the  Antibarbarus,  Schmalz  summarizes  what  is  to 
be  found  in  earlier  editions  and  in  the  lexicon  of  Georges  as 
follows :  '  Petitor  wird  in  klass.  Prosa  nur  in  gerichtlicher 
Beziehung  gebraucht  von  dem,  der  auf  etwas  Anspruch 
macht;  besonders  ist  es  ein  Kldger  in  einem  Privatpro- 
zesse.  —  Bei  Hor.  Od.  3,  i,  11,  ferner  bei  Scip.  Afr.  in 
Macrob.  Sat.  3,  14,  7,  sowie  N.  KL  bei  Sueton.  (lul.  Caes. 
23)  bedeutet  es  Bewerber  um  ein  Amt,  welcher  Kl.  candi- 
datus  hiess,  vgl.  Bagge z  p.  39.'  Harper's  Lexicon  says  of 
the  word  in  its  political  sense,  '  not  in  Cicero.' 

Nevertheless,  petitor,  '  candidate  for  office,'  is  found  in 
Cicero  twice:  i)  Mur.  44,  petitorem  ego,  praesertim  con- 
sulatus,  magna  spe,  magno  animo,  magnis  copiis  et  in  forum 
et  in  campum  deduct  volo.  2)  Plane.  7,  his  levioribus 
comitiis  diligentia  et  gratia  petitorum  honos  paritur. 

The  passages  escaped  the  compilers  of  the  old  lexicons 
to  Cicero  (hence  probably  the  statements  in  the  Antibar- 
barus  and  our  lexicons),  although  of  course  they  are  to  be 

1  This  and  the  next  four  notes  are  from  the  Harvard  Studies  in  Classical 
Philology,  1901,  xii,  232  ff. 

2  The  reference  is  to  Bagge's  de  Eloc.  Suetonii,  where  he  merely  sends  us 
back  to  Krebs  and  to  Georges. 


I36  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

found  in  Merguet.  Neither  have  the  editors  of  Horace 
used  either  passage,  although  the  first  well  illustrates 
descendat  in  campum  petitor. 

Cicero's  brother  Quintus  also  made  use  of  petitor  in  our 
sense  four  times  in  his  Commentariolum  Petitionis  (§§  18, 
25,  42,  45).  It  would  be  strange  enough  if  petitor,  'candi- 
date/ were  actually  lacking  in  classical  prose,  considering 
how  common  are  peto,  petitio,  and  competitor,  referring  to 
office  seeking.  In  general  usage,  however,  it  was  pushed 
out  by  candidatus  (no  doubt  originally  election  slang), 
which  is  often  employed  by  Cicero,  and  indeed  just  before 
and  just  after  our  first  passage ;  and  by  his  brother  twice 
(ibid.,  §§  31  and  44).  The  old-fashioned  term  was  still 
understood,  we  see,  in  the  time  of  Suetonius  ;  but  Macro- 
bius,  after  quoting  the  passage  from  Scipio  in  which  it 
occurred,  felt  it  necessary  to  explain  to  his  readers  that  it 
meant  candidatus  (ibid.,  8). 

It  may  be  mentioned  here,  for  the  sake  of  adding  to  the 
record,  that  in  the  Lex  Coloniae  Genetivae  of  B.C.  44  (CIL 
ii»  5439>  ch.  132)  we  have  the  curious  double  expression 
petitor  candidatus  three  times  and  candidatus  petitor  once. 
This  looks  much  like  that  adjectival  use  of  candidatus 
which  is  said  to  occur  only  in  poetry  and  in  post-Augustan 
prose  (see  the  Lexicon).  It  seems  to  describe  the  office- 
seeker  after  he  has  entered  his  name  as  a  regular  can- 
didate. My  friend  Professor  A.  A.  Howard  informs 
me  that  in  Suetonius,  Aug.  10,  candidattim  se  ostendit, 
according  to  his  own  collations  the  Parisinus  6116 
(S.  xii)  has  Candida  turn  petitorem  and  the  Parisinus  5801 
(S.  xii)  petitorem  in  the  margin  and  candidatum  in  the 
text.  These  Mss.  represent  two  different  classes,  and  in 


QVIN  WITH   THE   SUBJUNCTIVE   IN   QUESTIONS         137 

view  of  the  inscription  just  cited  I  think  it  possible 
that  something  is  to  be  said  for  the  double  expression 
in  Suetonius. 


ON   ^T/^WITH   THE   SUBJUNCTIVE  IN 
QUESTIONS1 

THE  use  of  quin  with  the  subjunctive  in  direct  questions 
has  been  passed  with  scant  notice  by  authors  of  gram- 
mars and  collectors  of  statistics.  Hence  in  Lane's  Latin 
Grammar,  §  1982,  I  was  led  to  write  as  if  quin  were  found 
but  once  in  this  usage  :  PL  Mil.  426  —  an  example  drawn 
from  Kienitz,  de  quin  particulae  ap.  pr.  scr.  lat.  usu,  p.  4. 
This  is  in  fact  the  stock  example ;  cf.  Liibbert,  Jenaer  Lift. 
Zeit.  1879,  p.  65.  Since  then  I  have  met  with  other  occur- 
rences, and  it  may  be  worth  while  to  print  them  here. 

1 )  Plaut.  Mil.  426,  Sc.  me  rogas  hem  qtii  sim  f    PH.  quin 
ego  hoc  rogem  quod  nesciam  ?     Here,  as  Kienitz  observes, 
no  other  mood  could  stand ;  cf.  Ter.  Andr.  749,  MY.  satin 
samt's  qui  me  id  rogites  f     DA.  quern  igitur  rogem  qui  hie 
neminem  alium  videnm  ? 

2)  Ter.  Phorm.  1015,  ego,  Nausistrata,  esse  in   hac  re 
culpam  meritum  non  nego ;   sed  ea  quin   sit  ignoscenda  ? 
Dziatzko  suggested  in  a  note  that  this  quin  clause  might 
be  nothing  but  a  direct  question  (thus  getting  rid  of  numer- 
ous forced  explanations),  and  he  is  now  followed  by  Elmer 
in  his  note  and  by  Hauler  in  his  text  and  note.     None  of 
them,  however,  cite  parallels  with  quin,  confining  them- 
selves to  subj  unctives  with  cur  non  and  quidni. 

1  Since  this  was  published  Professor  Sonnenschein  has  cited  other  exam- 
ples in  the  Classical  Review,  1902,  xvi,  167  ff. 


I38  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

3)  Ter.  Eun.  811,  TH.  quid  nunc  agimusf     GN.  quin 
redeamus?      Here   D2  and   G,  according  to  Fabia,  read 
redimus,  which  might  of  course  stand  (so  Kienitz,  p.  4, 
though  no  recent  editor),  but  there  seems  no  strong  reason 
for  such  a  change  nor  for  the  colon  of  our  printed  editions, 
instead  of  which  I  have  written  the  second  interrogation 
mark.     It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  in  A  we  have  quin 
corrected  to  quid  by  the  '  corrector  antiquissimus '  or  A2  of 
Hauler  and  Kauer,  a  hand  which  they  consider  not  much 
later  than  A  itself.     If  we  accept  this  correction  we  must 
read  with  Fleckeisen2 :  quid?  redeamus :  etc. 

4)  Lucretius  i,  798, 

quin  potius  tali  natura  praedita  quaedam 
corpora  constituas,  ignem  si  forte  crearint, 
posse  eadem  demptis  paucis  paudsque  tributis, 
or  dine  mutato  et  motu,  facer  e  aeris  auras, 
sic  alias  aliis  rebus  mutarier  omnis  f 

5)  Tac.  Ann.  4,  u,  quin  potius  ministrum  veneri  excru- 
ciaret,  auctorem  exquireret,  insita  denique  etiam  in  extraneos 
cunctatione  et  mom  adversum  unicum  et  nullius  ante  flagitii 
compertum  uteretur? 

The  next  two  examples  are  fragments,  so  that  we  cannot 
be  certain  that  the  sentences  were  independent  questions  ; 
still,  they  have  every  appearance  of  being  such.  Hence 
I  append  the  question  mark. 

6)  Lucil.  ap.  Non.  426,  5, 

quin  potius  vitam  degas  sedatu1  quietam, 

quant  tu  antiquiu1  quant  facer e  hoc  fecisse  viderist 

7)  Lucil.  ap.  Non.  300,  27, 

quin  totum  purges,  devellas  me  atque  deuras, 
exultes  et  sollicites  f 


QVIN  WITH  THE  SUBJUNCTIVE  IN  QUESTIONS         139 

So  far  there  can  be,  I  think,  little  doubt  of  the  readings. 
The  next  two  are  much  less  certain. 

8)  Cic.  Rep.  6,  14,  quin  tu  aspicias  ad  te  venientem  Pau- 
lum  patremf     Here  the  Palimpsest  and  Macrobius  fail  us, 
but  the  other  Mss.  of  the  Somnium  read  aspicias.     Editors 
since  Halm  print  his  emendation  aspicis.    Munro,  however, 
in  his  note  to  Lucr.  i,  798,  lends  the  weight  of  his  deliber- 
ate judgment  to  the  subjunctive.     It  ought  perhaps  to  be 
added  that  below  in  §  1 5  we  have  quid  moror  in  terris  ? 
quin  hue  ad  vos  venire  propero? 

9)  Cic.  Legg.  i,  14,  QUINT,  quid  enim  agam  potius  aut 
in  quo  melius  hunc  consumam  diem?     MARC,  quin  igitur 
ad  ilia  spatia  nostra  sedisque  pergamus?     Here  codd.  A  B2 
give  the  subjunctive  (though  Vahlen  notes  that  the  a  in  A 
seems  due  to  a  correction).      Editions  since  Halm  have 
pergimus.    The  emendation  is  distasteful.     The  indicative 
with  quin  generally  gives  an  impatient  tone  to  the  ques- 
tion, which  often  becomes  practically  a  command  or  an 
exhortation  to  the  speaker  himself;  cf.  Rep.  6,  15,  cited 
above.     But  a  polite  suggestion  is  in  place  here,  and  that 
seems  indicated  by  the  dubitative  nature  of  the  subjunc- 
tive.   Still  it  is  curious  that,  just  as  in  the  Republic,  so  here 
in  the  Laws  we  have  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of 
our  passage  an  undoubted  case  of  quin  with  the  indicative, 
§  13,  quin  igitur  ista  ipsa  explicas  nobis  his  subsicivis,  ut 
ats,  temporibus  et  conscribis  de  iure  cwili  subtilius  quam 
ceteri  ? 


140 


ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 


QUINTILIAN'S   QUOTATIONS    FROM    HORACE 

FOR  the  reading  intonsis  capillis  in  Hor.  C.  i,  12,  41, 
Quintilian  is  our  only  ancient  authority.  Against  him 
all  the  Mss.  of  Horace,  as  well  as  Servius  and  Charisius, 
give  incomptis  capillis.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that 
the  majority  of  the  editors  (e.g.  Bentley,  Keller,  Orelli- 
Hirschfelder,  Miiller,  Wickham)  read  the  latter.  But 
Kiessling  and  Smith  follow  Quintilian,  rightly  as  I  believe. 
Without  entering  into  other  reasons  for  this  reading  (on 
which  cf.  the  two  editors  just  mentioned),  I  wish  merely  to 
show  that  Quintilian  deserves  respect  as  an  authority  en 
the  text  of  Horace.  The  attempt  seems  worth  while 
because  Keller,  in  his  note  on  the  passage  in  the  Epile- 
gomena,  calls  Quintilian' s  reading  false  and  refers  to  his 
note  on  C.  I,  13,  2.  There  he  is  dealing  with  misquota- 
tions of  Horace  by  the  grammarians,  and  cites  one  each 
from  Priscian,  Victorinus,  Flavius  Caper,  Charisius  and 
Diomede,  two  from  Servius,  and  our  passage  from  Quin- 
tilian. All  of  these  he  considers  errors  due  to  the  habit  of 
quoting  from  memory.  Now,  although  everybody  knows 
that  misquotations  are  made  by  very  many  writers  and  in 
all  times  and  languages,  yet  Keller's  dictum  here  seems  a 
little  too  sweeping.  It  is  uttered  as  if  he  had  not  taken 
sufficient  account  of  the  memories  of  individuals,  and  as  if 
he  had  not  stopped  to  inquire  whether  Quintilian  and  the 
other  writers  mentioned  were  really  alike  in  their  methods 
of  quoting  from  Horace.  To  examine  the  works  of  all  of 
them  would  perhaps  be  a  long  task,  but  it  is  not  difficult  to 
find  Quintilian' s  record  in  this  matter. 

He  quotes  Horace  twenty-four  times  and  refers  to  pas- 


QUINTILIAN'S  QUOTATIONS  FROM   HORACE  141 

sages,  without  quoting  them,  three  times.  The  references 
may  be  found  so  conveniently  in  Meister's  edition,  p.  346, 
that  I  omit  them  here.  In  only  four  of  these  does  Quin- 
tilian's  evidence 1  differ  from  that  of  our  Mss.  of  Horace. 
The  first  is  the  passage  already  cited.  The  second  is 
A.  P.  311,  where  nobody  doubts  that,  as  against  the  present 
tense  in  codd.  B  and  C,  Quintilian  (i,  5,  2)  is  right  with 
sequentur,  agreeing  as  he  does  with  the  other  Mss.  and 
with  Porphyrio.  The  third  is  6".  I,  4,  n,  where  Quintilian 
10,  I,  94,  has:  ab  Horatio  dissentioy  qui  Lucilium  fluere 
lutulentum  et  esse  aliguid  quod  tollere  possis  putat.  Here 
the  Mss.  and  editions  of  Horace  give : 

cum  fluer et  lutulentus,  erat  quod  tollere  velles. 

The  only  real  difference  lies  in  the  word  possis,  because 
it  is  evident  that  the  passage  appears  in  Quintilian  as  a 
paraphrase  and  that  the  other  changes  are  due  to  his  use 
of  putat  to  introduce  it.  The  fact  that  esse  aliquid  fits  in 
metrically  with  quod  tollere  possis  is  possibly  a  mere  acci- 
dent, so  that  we  cannot  feel  certain  that  Quintilian  thought 
that  he  was  quoting  these  two  words.  The  fourth  passage 
is  Ep.  i,  i,  73  f.,  which  reads  thus  in  Horace  : 

olim  quod  volpes  aegroto  cauta  leoni 
respondzt,  referam. 

Quintilian,  5,  n,  20,  speaking  of  the  use  of  fables,  has: 
et  Horatius  ne  in  poemate  quidem  humilem  generis  huius 
usum  putavit  in  illis  versibus : 

quod  dixit  wipes  aegroto  cauta  koni. 

Here  we  certainly  seem  to  have  a  slip  of  the  memory ; 
but  here  and  in  the  use  of  possis  in  the  third  passage  are 

1  Omitting,  of  course,  mere  orthographical  variants,  like  classes  and  classis. 


142 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 


the  only  places  in  which  we  can  convict  Quintilian  of  this 
fault.  Therefore,  until  an  equally  good  record  can  be 
made  out  for  the  grammarians  mentioned,  we  should  be 
slow  to  class  him  among  them.  He  either  had  a  good 
memory  for  Horace,  or  else  he  usually  verified  his 
quotations. 

ON   CICERO,   QVINCT.  13 

qua  in  re  ita  diligens  erat  quasi  ei  qui  magna  fide  socie- 
tatem  gererent  arbitrium  pro  socio  condemnari  solerent. 

A  MUCH  discussed  and  emended  passage.  Long  inter- 
prets thus  :  he  was  as  active  in  this  business  (i.e.  in  cheating 
his  partner)  as  if  those  who  acted  as  honest  partners  were 
usually  convicted  instead  of  the  (dishonest)  partner.  But 
with  this  explanation  the  word  arbitrium  is  unnecessary, 
and  indeed  some  of  the  older  editors  omitted  it  as  a  gloss. 
Others  read  ad  arbitrium  or  ad  arbitrum,  '  before  the  arbi- 
ter ' ;  and  Landgraf  per  arbitrum  (see  p.  44  of  his  de  Cic. 
elocutione  in  or.  pro  Q.  et pro  R.  Am.  conspicud).  Emenda- 
tion, however,  is  unnecessary,  for  we  are  dealing  here  with 
legal  language,  in  which  the  use  of  the  double  accusative 
with  condemnare  (i.e.  aliquem  aliquid)  was  common;  see 
Stolz  and  Schmalz,  Lat.  Gr.3,  p.  233.  In  our  sentence  the 
accusative  of  the  penalty,  arbitrium,  is  retained  with  the 
passive  voice ;  cf .  Gaius  4,  32,  tantam  pecuniam  condemne- 
tur.  Cicero  says  then:  'as  if  men  who  acted  as  honest 
partners  were  usually  condemned  to  arbitrium  pro  socio,' 
this  is,  were  obliged  to  go  before  an  arbitrator  on  a  ques- 
tion of  partnership,  for  defrauding  a  partner.  This  expla- 
nation is  borne  out  by  Rose.  Com.  25,  quae  cum  ita  sint,  cur 


143 

non  arbitrum  pro  socio  adegeris  Q.  Roscium  quaero.  The 
same  phrase  arbitrum  adigere  with  the  accusative  of  a 
person  occurs  in  Off.  3,  66,  and  without  such  an  accusative 
in  Top.  43.  Hence  we  may  suppose  that  the  passage  in 
pro  Quinctio,  if  not  strictly  a  legal  formula,  was  modelled 
on,  or  suggested  by  the  certainly  legal  formula  arbitrum 
adigere.  Audi  pro  socio  is  legal  phraseology  for  *in  a  part- 
nership question  ' :  cf .  Rose.  Com.  above  and  Fl.  43 ;  Dig. 
17,  tit.  2. 

ON  THE  DATE  OF  THE  ORATION  PRO 
ROSCIO  COMOEDO 

THE  question  of  the  year  in  which  this  speech  was 
delivered  has  been  much  discussed  and  remains  unde- 
termined. Probably  77  or  76  B.C.  is  ordinarily  preferred. 
The  latter  (first  suggested  by  Fabricius)  was  favored  by 
Teuffel  (cf.  Teuffel-Schwabe,  i6,  §  179,  3);  it  or  77  (Fer- 
raci,  Orelli,  Klotz)  is  supported  by  Landgraf  (de  Ciceronis 
elocutione,  etc.,  p.  47  if.) ;  and  76  has  recently  been  defended 
by  W.  Sternkopf  (Jahrb.  fur  Cl.  Phil.  1895,  p.  41  ff.), 
although  he  believes  that  either  74  or  73  is  also  possible. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  year  68,  fixed  by  Manuzio,  had  the 
support  of  Drumann  (v,  p.  346  ff.),  and  Schanz  adopts  it 
(Gesch.  der  Rom.  Lift.  ia,  p.  249) ;  A.  Mayr  has  very  lately 
proposed  and  defended  66  B.C.  (  Wiener  St.  1900,  p.  115  ff.)- 
C.  A.  Schmidt,  in  his  useful  edition  of  our  speech,  Leipzig, 
1839,  p.  13  (the  last  edition,  except  Long's,  with  a  commen- 
tary), argued  briefly  that  the  date  was  not  earlier  than  68 
and  might  be  any  one  of  the  next  few  years. 

The  question  is  interesting  biographically ;  for  if  we 
adopt  77  or  76  we  are  still  in  the  period  of  Cicero's  youth, 


I44  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

before  he  began  to  hold  public  office,  although  after  his 
return  from  his  studies  in  Asia.  In  68,  however,  he  had 
already  been  quaestor  and  aedile,  and  had  impeached 
Verres ;  in  66  he  was  praetor,  advocated  the  Manilian  law, 
and  defended  Cluentius.  Without  entering  fully  into  the 
arguments  which  have  led  the  scholars  just  mentioned  to 
their  conclusions,  let  us  see  what  information  about  the 
date  can  be  gleaned  from  the  speech  itself. 

1)  It  is  a  fair  inference  that  the  great  career  of  Roscius 
the  actor,  which  ended  only  with  his  death  in  62  B.C.,  was 
now  drawing  near  its  close  ;  cf.  §  23,  decem  his  annis  proxi- 
mis  HS  sexagiens  honestissime   consequi  poluit:    noluit. 
Laborem  quaestus  recepit,  quaestum  laboris  reiecit ;  populo 
Romano  adhuc  servire  non  destitit,  sibi  servire  iam  pridem 
destitit.      The  same  section  contains  an   allusion  to  the 
popularity  of  the  dancer  Dionysia  and   the   great  sums 
which  she  was  earning  at  the  time,  with  the  statement  by 
Cicero  that  Roscius,  if  he  wished,  could  be  earning  even 
more.     The  only  other  mention  of  Dionysia  is  found  in 
Gellius  i,  5,  3,  from  which  it  seems  likely  that  in  the  year 
62  (when  Cicero  and  Hortensius  defended  Sulla)  she  was 
a  popular  personage. 

2)  From  §  42  we  learn  that  Flavius,  whose  killing  of 
the  slave  of  Roscius  and  Fannius  had  led  to  the  case  in 
which  our  speech  was  delivered,  had  long  been  dead — is 
lam  pridem  est  mortuus.     It  appears  later,  however,  that 
iam  pridem  cannot  here  refer  to  a  period  of  much  more 
than  two  years  (see  p.  145).     But  in  its  context  iam  pridem 
is  not  an  exaggeration ;  two  years  dead  is  dead  long  ago 
when  the  question  is  one  of  looking  vainly  to  a  dead  man 
for  evidence. 


DATE  OF  THE  ORATION  PRO  ROSCIO  COMOEDO       145 

3)  After  the  killing  of  the  slave,  his  owners,  who  had 
expected  to  make  money  out  of  his  gains  as  an  actor, 
brought  suit  against  Flavius.     Just  as  the  suit  was  ready 
to  be  tried,  Roscius  concluded  a  settlement  with  Flavius. 
This  settlement  took  place,  according  to  the  reading  of  all 
our  Mss.,  fifteen  years  before  the  delivery  of  our  speech : 
§  37  abhinc  annis  xv.     Of  the  time  of  this  settlement  is 
also  used  the  expression  iam  pridem  (38),  and  the  adjec- 
tive vetus  (39).     They  are  contrasted  with  mine,  nova,  and 
recens,  used  in  the  same  sections  of  a  proceeding  next  to 
be  mentioned. 

4)  Fannius  claimed  that  he,  as  the  partner  of  Roscius, 
was   entitled  to  a  share  of  what   Roscius  received  from 
Flavius  under  the  settlement.     Roscius  denied  this  and 
the  question  came  before  an  arbiter.      Under  his  advice 
a   compromise  was   effected  between  them.      This   com- 
promise took  place  three  full  years   before  the  delivery 
of  our  speech  (amplius  triennium,  8  ;  triennio  amplius,  9 ; 
abhinc  triennium,   37).      It  is  this  compromise  which  is 
called  nova  in  38,  recens  in  39,  and  of  which  nunc  is  used 
in  38. 

Summarizing  what  we  have  learned  thus  far,  we  see 
that  the  compromise  was  of  three  years'  standing,  that  a 
much  longer  time  intervened  between  it  and  the  earlier 
settlement,  and  that  Flavius  had  died  so  long  ago  that  iam 
pridem  could  be  used  of  the  event  which  cut  Cicero  off 
from  the  possibility  of  calling  him  as  a  witness.  These 
facts  do  not  help  us  at  all  towards  fixing  any  particular 
date.  Toward  this  we  have,  so  far,  only  the  inference 
that  the  speech  was  delivered  in  the  last  years  of  Roscius, 
who  died  in  62  B.C. 


I46  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

5)  After  the  settlement  between  Flavius  and  Roscius, 
the  original  suit  against  Flavius  was  continued  by  Fannius 
and  finally  won  by  him  (§  41  f.).  This  end  came  after  the 
compromise  which  had  been  effected  between  Roscius  and 
his  partner  Fannius  (ibid?).  The  index  in  this  suit  was 
Cluvius,  called  an  eques  (42,  48),  but  otherwise  unknown 
to  us.  The  fact  that  Sulla  deprived  the  equites  of  the 
privilege  of  acting  as  indices  in  81  B.C.  and  that  this  privi- 
lege was  not  restored  to  them  until  the  Aurelian  Law  of 
70  B.C.  seems  to  show  that  Cluvius  could  not  have  ren- 
dered his  decision  during  the  intervening  period.  It  is 
true  that  some  have  supposed  that  Sulla's  law  did  not 
refer  to  the  judges  in  private  suits  such  as  the  one  in 
question  (cf.  Bethmann-Hollweg,  Der  rom.  Civilprocess, 
ii,  p.  805 ;  Keller,  Der  rom.  Cimlprocess,  §  10).  If  this 
were  so,  we  should  not  be  helped  at  all  towards  a  date  by 
the  mention  of  the  knighthood  of  Cluvius.  But  as  Mayr 
(p.  117)  points  out,1  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  for 
a  distinction  between  public  and  private  suits  in  this  mat- 
ter, and  he  further  adds  that  there  is  on  record  no  case 
wherein  a  knight  acted  as  a  judge  which  we  can  certainly 
ascribe  to  the  period  between  the  Cornelian  and  Aurelian 
laws.  It  follows,  therefore,  that  Cluvius  gave  the  decision 
either  before  (or  in)  the  year  8 1  or  after  (or  in)  the  year  70. 
And  inasmuch  as  his  verdict  was  given  after  the  compro- 
mise between  Fannius  and  Roscius,  which  was  reached 
three  years  before  our  speech  was  delivered,  and  further 
as  Cicero's  oratorical  career  began  not  earlier  than  82  B.C. 
and  probably  in  8i,2  and  was  interrupted  by  his  two  years 

1  So  also,  apparently,  Mommsen,  Strafrecht,  p.  209  f. 
«Cf.  Brut.  311,  312,  328. 


DATE  OF  THE  ORATION  PRO  ROSCIO  COMOEDO       147 

in  Asia  (79-77  B.C.),  we  get  for  the  first  time  something 
definite  towards  fixing  the  date  of  the  speech.  The  next 
point  affords  us  something  more  definite  still. 

6)  Under  the  settlement  mentioned  above,  Roscius  re- 
ceived from  Flavius  a  certain  estate.  The  value  of  it  was 
among  the  important  topics  treated  in  our  speech,  and  in 
§  33  Cicero  says :  accepit  enim  agrum  temporibus  eis  cum 
iacerent  pretia  praediorum  ;  qui  ager  neque  villam  habuit 
neque  ex  ulla  parte  fuit  cultus ;  qui  nunc  multo  pluris  est 
quam  tune  fuit.  Neque  id  est  mirum  :  turn  enim  propter 
rei  publicae  calamitates  omnium  possessiones  erant  incertae, 
nunc  deum  immortalium  benignitate  omnium  fortunae  sunt 
certae ;  turn  erat  ager  incultus  sine  tecto,  nunc  est  cultissi- 
mus  cum  optima  -villa. 

From  this  passage  we  learn  two  things :  first,  that  the 
estate  passed  into  Roscius's  hands  at  a  time  when  the 
value  of  lands  was  low,  and  (this  and  is  important)  when 
the  misfortunes  of  the  Commonwealth  caused  all  men  to 
feel  uneasy  about  their  holdings ;  second,  that  a  consider- 
able time  must  have  elapsed  since  Roscius  had  received 
the  estate,  because  it  came  to  him  as  utterly  uncultivated 
land  without  buildings,  whereas  now  it  was  in  the  highest 
state  of  cultivation  and  had  on  it  a  very  handsome  villa. 
Under  the  second  head  we  get  no  immediate  helps  towards 
a  date  for  the  speech,  but  only  further  reason  for  believing 
that  it  was  delivered  long  after  the  troubles  between  Ros- 
cius and  Fannius  with  Flavius  began.  Under  the  first 
head,  however,  we  are  led  at  once  to  look  for  a  crisis  affect- 
ing the  value  of  lands.  This  crisis  must  be  searched  for  not 
earlier  than  the  fifteenth  year  preceding  82  or  8 1  B.C.  (the 
beginning  of  Cicero's  career)  and  not  later  than  the  fif- 


I48  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

teenth  year  before  the  death  of  Roscius  in  62  B.C., — that 
is  to  say,  between  the  years  97  and  77. 

Within  these  twenty  years  the  Marsic  War  might  at  first 
seem  to  be  the  period  for  which  we  are  in  search,  and 
indeed  Sternkopf  (p.  47)  holds  that  Cicero  is  referring 
to  it.  This  war  broke  out  towards  the  close  of  91,  and 
was  brought  to  an  end  in  88;  fifteen  years  later  would 
give  us  a  choice  between  76,  74,  or  73,  for  the  delivery  of 
our  speech.1  Two  objections,  however,  may  be  advanced 
against  any  of  these  dates.  The  first  is  that  Cluvius  the 
eques  would  thus  be  found  rendering  a  verdict  within  the 
prohibited  period  (see  p.  146).  The  second  and  the  more 
important  (since  some  may  still  hold  the  view  that  Cluvius 
might  have  acted  in  a  private  suit)  is  that  we  have  no  evi- 
dence of  any  such  general  depreciation  of  the  value  of 
lands  and  of  any  such  universal  financial  anxiety  during 
the  Marsic  War  as  Cicero  describes  in  §  33.  If  Cicero 
had  stopped  with  the  words  cum  iacerent  pretia  praediorum, 
we  might  think  that  he  was  referring  to  land  in  Etruria 
(for,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  it  is  probable  that  the  piece  of 
land  which  Roscius  received  from  Flavius  was  situated 
there) ;  but  he  says  also  omnium  possessiones  erant  incertae. 
And  there  is  no  allusion  elsewhere  in  the  authors  to  any 
such  general  state  of  uncertainty  during  the  Marsic  War. 

But  within  our  period  of  twenty  years  there  was  another 
crisis,  namely,  that  caused  by  the  Sullan  proscriptions 
which  began  towards  the  end  of  82  and  extended  into  the 
middle  of  81.  This  was  a  reign  of  terror  which,  so  far  as 
it  concerned  matters  of  property  and  titles  to  it,  perfectly 
corresponded  to  the  account  given  by  Cicero  in  §  33.  The 

1  The  year  75  is  barred  out  by  Cicero's  absence  in  Sicily. 


DATE  OF  THE  ORATION   PRO   ROSCIO  COMOEDO       149 

state  of  things  described  in  the  speech  for  Roscius  of 
Ameria  makes  this  evident ;  cf .  also  with  Landgraf  Para- 
dox. 46,  qui  expulsiones  vicinorum,  qui  latrocinia  in  agris 
.  .  .  qui possessiones  vacuas,  qui  proscriptions  locupletium, 
qui  cladis  municipiorum,  qui  illam  Sullani  temporis  mes- 
sem  recordetur,  and  Sail.  Cat.  51,  33,  uti  quisque  domum  aut 
villam,  postremo  vas  aiit  vestimentum  alicuius  concupiverat, 
dabat  operam  ut  is  in  proscriptorum  numero  esset.  To 
Landgraf 's  citations  we  may  add  pro  Caecina  n,  fttndum 
in  agro  Tarquiniensi  vendidit  temporibus  illis  difficillimis 
solutionis,  which  likewise  contains  an  allusion  to  the  Sullan 
period ;  cf.  also  §  95  of  the  same  speech,  where  he  uses 
calamitas  reipublicae  as  in  our  speech.  Nor  does  Land- 
graf refer  to  the  fact  that  Etruria  (Flavius,  from  whom 
Roscius  received  the  estate,  lived,  like  the  man  of  pro 
Caec.,  in  Tarquinii,  §  32)  was  a  special  centre  of  fighting 
and  disturbance  at  the  time ;  in  Rose.  Am.  20  we  find 
Volterrae  still  holding  out  after  the  submission  of  Rome 
herself.  We  have,  therefore,  abundant  evidence  to  lead  us 
to  adopt  the  year  81  as  the  period  referred  to  in  §  33. 
And  this  will  bring  us  fifteen  years  later  with  Mayr  to 
66  B.C.  as  the  date  of  our  speech,  to  70  or  69  (amplius  tri- 
ennium,  §  8,  abhinc  triennium>  §  37)  as  the  date  of  the 
compromise,  and  to  some  time  very  soon  after  the  com- 
promise to  the  verdict  of  Cluvius,  who  is  thus  found  acting 
as  a  judge  after  the  Aurelian  Law  gave  him  the  right.  The 
year  66  is  in  fact  the  only  one  which  without  any  forcing 
fits  all  the  circumstances  described  in  the  speech,  and  it  is 
a  year  in  which  we  know  that  Cicero  was  active,  since  in  it 
he  delivered  the  speeches  de  Imp.  Pomp.,  pro  Cluentio,  pro 
Fundanio,  and  pro  Gallio.  Pompey  had  just  cleared  the 


ISO 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


sea  of  pirates,  and  on  that  element  as  well  as  on  land  it 
might  be  said  with  truth  nunc  omnium  fortunae  sunt 
certae  (33). 

Only  two  obstacles  stand  in  the  way  of  the  general 
adoption  of  this  date,  one  of  them  more  than  three  hun- 
dred years  old,  the  other  a  little  over  twenty.  Neither  of 
these,  I  think,  ought  to  make  us  abandon  the  date  which 
we  have  reached,  I  trust,  by  the  natural  method  of  pro- 
cedure and  on  rational  grounds. 

The  first  obstacle  need  not  detain  us  long.  It  is  the 
emendation  v  or  iv  for  xv  in  the  expression  abhinc  annis  xv 
(37),  which  stood  in  the  vulgate  for  centuries  down  to  the 
text  of  Klotz,  and  which,  though  not  printed  in  the  Teub- 
ner  or  Tauchnitz  texts,  has  th  j  support  of  many  scholars, 
including  Drumann1  and  Landgraf.2  In  his  first  edition 
Lambinus  changed  xv  to  v,  but  in  his  second  he  read  iv 
with  Hotman  whose  reasons  for  the  change  he  approved. 
Hotman's  note  is  as  follows  :  '  manifestum  mendum.  Le- 
gendum  opinor  iv  id  est  quatuor.  Primum  quod  iam  supra 
nomen  hoc  IDDD  HS  de  quo  haec  controversia  est  nonnisi 
ab  hinc  quadriennium  a  Fannio  in  adversaria  relatum 
dicat.  Scribit  enim  amplius  triennium.  Deinde  quod 
modo  repromissionem  ab  hinc  triennium  factam  confirmet, 
quam  satis  constat  non  multo  post  Roscii  transactionem 
factam  esse.  Postremo  tamdiu  prolatam  esse  rem  mihi 
certe  non  fit  verisimile.'  Long  ago  Klotz  and  Schmidt 

1  Who  thought  that  the  allusion  in  §  33  was  to  the  time  of  Spartacus;  but 
I  know  of  no  other  passage  which  points  to  a  disturbed  condition  of  land 
values  and  titles  at  that  time. 

2  Whose  adoption  of  the  year  77  or  76  as  the  date  of  the  speech  must 
oblige  him  to  accept  the  emendation,  since  he  thinks  that  the  allusion  in  §  33 
is  to  the  time  of  Sulla. 


DATE  OF  THE  ORATION  PRO  ROSCIO  COMOEDO      151 

saw  that  this  emendation  was  based  on  mere  feeling,  not 
on  any  sound  argument.  Hotman  did  not  feel  that  the 
case  against  Flavius  could  have  been  left  undecided  for  so 
many  years  as  are  required  by  the  reading  xv ;  and  he 
felt  that  Roscius's  settlement  with  Flavius  could  not  have 
taken  place  very  long  before  his  compromise  with  Fannius. 
His  feeling  is  of  no  consequence  in  the  face  of  the  fact 
that  the  Ms.  reading  is  a  possible  one  and  in  face  of  the 
language  used  by  Cicero  in  §  33.  For,  as  Baron 1  remarks, 
no  writer  would  talk  in  this  strain  about  a  period  of  only 
four  years. 

The  second  obstacle  lies  in  Landgraf's  investigation  of 
the  language  and  style  of  the  speech,  from  which  he  draws 
the  conclusion  that  it  must  be  placed  in  77  or  76,  soon 
after  Cicero's  return  from  Asia,  since  it  resembles  more 
closely  his  earlier  than  his  later  works  and  yet  differs 
enough  from  the  earliest  to  show  that  it  belongs  to  a  kind 
of  transition  period.  In  a  brief  answer  to  Landgraf,  Mayr 
(p.  1 19)  points  to  the  fact  that  our  speech  is  only  a  frag- 
ment and  that  its  56  sections  cannot  properly  be  compared 
with  the  253  sections  of  the  certainly  early  speeches  pro 
Quinct.  and  Rose.  Am.  He  adds:  'turn  si  huiusce  aetatis 
scriptorum  in  singulis  libris  dicendi  usum  respicimus,  nonne 
eos  a  consuetudine  sua  nonnumquam  discedere  invenimus  ? 
Non  hie  vel  illic  post  longius  quoddam  temporis  inter- 
vallum  ad  eum,  quern  antea  adamaverant,  loquendi  usum 
inscii  vel  etiam  inviti  relabuntur  ?  Certe  non  is  sum,  qui 
talia,  qualia  supra  allata  sunt,  argumenta  spernenda  esse 
censeam,  sed  si  ea  pugnant  cum  gravioribus,  quae  ex  rebus 

1  Der  Process  gegen  den  Schauspieler  Roscius.  In  Zeitschr.  der  Savigny- 
Stiftungfur  Rechtsgtschichtc,  1 880,  i,  2,  p.  118. 


152 


ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 


ipsis  petita  sunt,  haec  illis  anteferre  non  dubito.'  And  he 
concludes  with  the  remark  that  the  case  of  Roscius  Comoe- 
dus  was  not  an  important  one,  and  that  consequently 
Cicero  was  not  likely  to  have  spent  much  toil  upon  the 
speech,  so  that  we  need  not  be  surprised  if  he  sometimes 
falls  back  into  methods  of  expression  which  he  had  aban- 
doned in  his  greater  works.  These  reasonings  by  Mayr 
seem  sound,  but  I  hardly  think  that  they  are  needed,  for  I 
am  more  than  inclined  to  doubt  whether  Landgraf  has 
actually  shown  that  the  language  used  in  this  speech  really 
does  point  to  the  early  period. 

Before  considering  Landgraf's  points  in  detail,  a  general 
warning  may  be  in  place.  If  we  take  up  the  first  volume 
of  Cicero's  orations  and  read  them  in  the  order  in  which 
they  are  printed,  we  feel,  as  soon  as  we  begin  the  Divinatio 
in  Caecilium,  that  we  are  in  a  different  literary  atmosphere 
from  that  of  the  pro  Quinct.,  Rose,  Am,,  and  Rose.  Com. 
But  is  not  this  a  misleading  feeling,  due  to  the  fact  that  in 
the  Divinatio  we  are  suddenly  relieved  from  the  technical 
details  of  which  those  works  are  so  full?  Perhaps  this 
absence  of  the  difficulties  caused  by  technicalities  makes 
one  fancy  that  the  Divinatio  is  written  in  much  better 
Latin  than  is  really  to  be  found  in  it.  However  this  may 
be,  we  must  not  think  that  either  it  or  the  Verrines  repre- 
sent Cicero  at  his  best  in  oratorical  style;  for  these 
speeches  resemble  those  of  his  early  period  much  more 
nearly  than  they  resemble  the  great  speeches  of  his  prime, 
—  the  pro  Sestio  for  example.  The  Verrines  are  in  fact 
treated  by  Hellmuth  *  as  belonging  to  the  earlier  period 
and  he  finds  in  them  much  in  common  with  the  earlier 

1  Ada  Sem,  Phil.  Erlang.  i,  1877. 


DATE  OF  THE  ORATION  PRO   ROSCIO  COMOEDO       153 

speeches,  e.g.  redundancy,  union  of  synonyms,  parono- 
masia, alliterations,  all  recalling  the  style  of  earlier  Latin 
or  the  language  of  the  comic  poets.  Still,  all  these  charac- 
teristics are  found  to  a  less  degree  in  the  Verrines  than 
before,  so  that  they  exhibit  a  certain  advance  in  the  direc- 
tion of  a  purer  prose  style  and  less  inequality.  They  are, 
therefore,  called  by  Thomas1  'la  derniere  oeuvre  de  jeu- 
nesse  de  Cic6ron  et  la  premiere  production  de  sa  maturiteV 
If  public  orations  like  the  Verrines  must  occupy  this 
middle  ground,  is  there  anything  surprising  in  rinding  a 
return  to  it  in  a  speech  written  a  few  years  later  for  an 
unimportant  private  suit  like  that  of  Roscius  ?  But  to 
return  to  the  points  which  Landgraf  makes  :  they  are  five 
in  number. 

i)  Examples  of  the  Asian  style  consisting  of  the  joining 
together  of  pairs  of  synonymous  words.  Landgraf  cites 
oro  atque  obsecro  (20),  pravum  et  perversum  (30),  planius 
atqite  apertius  (43),  locupletes  et  pecuniosos  (44),  irasci  et 
suscensere  (46),  consistere  et  commorari  (48),  ductum  et 
conflatum  (48),  callidus  et  versutus  (48),  resistere  et  repug- 
nare  (51).  Here  are  nine  pairs  and  to  them  we  may  add 
three  others  :  copia  et  facilitate  (2),  conclusa  et  comprehensa 
(15),  sanctos  et  religiosos  (44),  —  a  total  of  twelve  in  all. 
This  means  an  average  occurrence  of  one  pair  in  about 
every  4|  sections  of  the  oration ;  but  in  the  253  sections  of 
the  pro  Quinct.  and  Rose.  Am.  there  are,  according  to 
Landgraf 's  count  (p.  48),  127  pairs  or  one  in  every  two 
sections  This  great  difference  in  proportion,  which  it 
does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  Landgraf  to  calculate, 
ought  at  once  to  make  us  suspect  the  truth  of  his  state' 

1  Ciceron:    Verrines,  Introd.,  p.  32. 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

ment,  *  totius  orationis  habitus  prioribus  similior  est  quam 
posterioribus.'  Let  us  turn  to  two  of  the  later  orations, 
selecting  the  two  which  we  know  were  delivered  in  66  B.C., 
the  Imp.  Pomp,  and  the  pro  Cluentio.  Examining  the  first 
fifty-six  sections  in  each  (the  number  of  sections  in  our 
fragment),  we  find  at  least  14  pairs  of  synonyms  in  the 
former  and  1 5  in  the  latter,  as  follows :  Imp.  Pomp. : 
deposci  atque  expeti  (5),  excitare  atque  inflammare  (6), 
necandos  trucidandosque  (7),  pulsus  superatusque  (8),  re- 
fressos  ac  retardatos  (13),  ornatas  atque  instructas  (20), 
superatam  atque  depress  am  (21),  terrore  ac  metu  (23),  varia 
et  diversa  (28),  superatos  prostratosque  (30),  attenuatum 
atque  imminutum  (30),  vitam  ac  spiritum  (33),  imperio  ac 
potestati  ($$),  meminisse  et  commemorare  (47);  in  the  pro 
Cluentio  :  convicta  atque  damnata  (7),  finis  atque  exitus  (7), 
portum ac perfugium  (7),  expulsa  atque  exturbata(\£),  effre- 
natam  et  indomitam  (15),  squalore  et  sordibus  (18),  vi  ac 
necessitate  (19),  breviter  strictimque  (29),  initio  ac  funda- 
mento  (30),  indicia  et  vestigia  (30),  blanditiis  et  adsenta- 
tionibus  (36),  compertum  atque  deprehensum  (43),  infesta 
atque  inimica  (44),  comperta  manifesteque  deprehensa  (48), 
aperta  et  manifesta  (54).  From  this  examination  it  must 
be  apparent  that  in  the  matter  of  the  joining  of  pairs  of 
synonyms  Landgraf 's  view  is  quite  mistaken ;  for  the  fact 
is  that  herein  our  oration  resembles  more  closely  the  two 
which  were  delivered  in  66  B.C.  than  the  two  delivered 
before  Cicero's  journey  to  Asia.  More  striking  is  Land- 
graf's  observation  that  whereas  in  the  pro  Quinct.  and  Rose. 
Am.  the  word  used  to  connect  such  synonyms  is  atque 
(82  times)  or  ac  (45  times),  in  the  Rose.  Com.  it  is  et,  except 
in  §§20  and  43,  where  atque  appears,  while  ac  is  never 


DATE  OF  THE  ORATION  PRO  ROSCIO  COMOEDO       155 

used.1  Noting  that  in  the  certainly  later  orations  Cicero 
employs  atque,  ac,  and  et  indiscriminately,  Landgraf  argues 
that  Cicero  had  become  conscious  of  his  '  Asian '  fault  of 
coupling  synonyms,  and  that  in  his  struggle  against  it  in 
the  Rose.  Com.  he  purposely  employed  et  instead  of  atque 
(ac)  which  had  been  his  habit.  But  this  observation  of 
Landgraf's  is  rather  curious  than  practical,  and  the  con- 
clusion which  he  deduces  from  it  cannot  be  trusted.  This 
is  obvious  the  moment  we  note  that  in  the  first  56 
sections  of  Imp.  Pomp,  we  have,  in  the  examples  given 
above,  nine  occurrences  of  atque  (ac)  to  only  two  of  et,  — 
almost  exactly  the  reverse  of  the  figures  in  the  Rose.  Com. 
where  are  ten  of  et  and  two  of  atque.  On  Landgraf's 
principle  we  should  see  in  the  Imp.  Pomp,  (if  we  had  only 
the  first  56  sections  of  it)  a  return  to  Asianism ! 

2)  Landgraf  next  notes  Cicero's  use  of  the  phrases  tan- 
turn  laborem  capere  and  paullulum  compendii  facere  in  §  49, 
and  points  out  that  both  phrases  are  found  in  Plautus  and 
Terence  and  that  Cicero  does  not  later  employ  them  in  the 
orations.  But  Landgraf  here  fails  to  observe  that  there  is 
a  very  good  reason  why  Cicero  should  employ  these  collo- 
quialisms in  our  passage.  He  is  not  speaking  in  his  own 
person,  but  is  giving  us  an  imaginary  dialogue,  in  a  truly 
comic  vein,  between  Roscius  and  Cluvius.  The  colloquial 
color  is  just  what  is  wanted,  and  it  proves  nothing  at  all 
about  Cicero's  usual  style  at  the  time  and  consequently 
nothing  about  the  date  of  the  speech,  in  which  it  occurs 
as  a  mere  accident  of  treatment.  Further,  tantum  labo- 
rem capere  (for  the  commoner  tantum  laborem  suscipere)  is 
pretty  closely  paralleled  in  Verr.  5,  37,  nequaquam  capio 
"Lfraudis  ac  furti  in  §  26  looks  very  like  a  case  of  synonyms  coupled  by  ac. 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

tantum  voluptatis  quantum  et  sollicitudinis  et  laboris  ;  and 
finally,  in  the  De  Officiis  3,  63,  Cicero  allows  himself  to  say 
tantum  se  negat  facturum  compendii.  Neither  of  these 
usages,  therefore,  need  surprise  us  in  the  colloquial  passage 
in  our  oration. 

3)  The  superlative  novissimus  occurs  in  §  30,  qui  ne  in 
novissimis  quidem   erat  histrionibus,  ad  primes  pervenit 
comoedos.     The  word  has  a  familiar  sound  to  us  because 
Caesar  uses  it  so  often,  but,  as  Landgraf  notes,  it  is  found 
nowhere  else  in  the  works  of  Cicero,  and  indeed  Gellius 
(10,  21 )  remarks  that  Cicero  never  used  it  at  all.     Hence 
we  might  be  inclined  to  think  that  the  word  in  our  Mss. 
was  due  to  a  gloss ;  but  if  it  is  allowed  to  stand  as  a  a7ra£ 
I  do  not  see  how  it  points  to  the  year  76  rather  than  to 
ten  years  later.     Varro  tells  us  that  his  master  Aelius  Stilo 
condemned  the  word,  and  that  within  his  recollection  it  was 
avoided  by  senes.     This  information  comes  from  Varro's 
Lingua  Latina  (6,  59 ;  Gell.  ibid.},  and  yet  we  find  Varro 
himself  using  novissimus  half  a  dozen  years  later  in  his 
Res  Rusticae  (i,  2,  u),  showing  that  he  had  got  rid  of  his 
master's  prejudice.     Cicero  also  was  an  admiring  pupil  of 
Aelius  Stilo  (cf.  Brut.  205  ff.),  and  it  seems  rather  more 
likely  that  he  would  have  departed  from  the  teachings  of 
that  philologian  in  a  later  than  in  an  earlier  work.    At  any 
rate,  there  is  nothing  'Asian'  nor  poetical  in  novissimus, 
and  these  are  the  two  factors  on  which  Landgraf  chiefly 
relies  to  prove  that  the  language  of  the  Rose.  Com.  points 
to  an  early  date. 

4)  5)  The  adverb  extemplo  (8)  and  the  phrase  exspecto 
quam  mox  (i  and  44)  seem  certainly  to  be  drawn  from  the 
early  poets.     The  former  occurs  nowhere  else  in  Cicero's 


DATE  OF  THE  ORATION   PRO   ROSCIO  COMOEDO       157 

writings  except  in  his  Aratea ;l  the  latter  is  found  only 
here  and  in  Inv.  2,  85.  Landgraf  might  have  gone  even 
further  and  noted  that  in  §  I  of  our  speech  we  have  a 
perfect  septenarius: 

exp^cto  quam  mox  Cha^rea  hac  oratione  utatur. 

If  this  occurred  in  the  proem  of  an  oration,  it  would 
indeed  be  astonishing ;  but  our  fragment  is  wholly  without 
a  proem,  and  possibly  it  may  be  that  we  have  here  either 
a  quotation  or  an  adaptation  from  some  play,  suggested, 
of  course,  by  the  name  Chaerea,  which  seems  to  occur  only 
here  before  imperial  times  except  in  the  Eunuchus.  But 
I  should  not  wish  to  press  this  point,  and  of  course  neither 
quoted  nor  accidental  verses  prove  anything  towards  a 
date.  Regarding  extemplo  and  exspecto  quam  mox  as  mere 
words,  however,  and  as  words  used  by  the  early  poets,  the 
question  arises  whether,  because  Cicero  used  them  only 
here,  we  are  therefore  to  set  an  early  date  to  the  oration. 
It  is  certainly  true  that  in  the  pro  Quinct.  and  the  Rose. 
Am.  we  find  a  considerable  number  of  such  traces  of  Cic- 
ero's reading  in  the  early  poets,  and  that  those  speeches 
belong  to  his  most  youthful  period.  But  in  our  speech  we 
are  dealing  with  a  very  small  number,  in  fact  with  only 
two,  and  the  evidence  is  too  limited  to  prove  anything  at 
all.  This  is  obvious  the  moment  we  begin  to  apply  such 
a  test  to  orations  which  we  know  do  not  belong  to  that 
youthful  period.  For  instance,  the  Verrines  fall  ten  years 
later,  in  70  B.C.,  and  yet  here  we  find  Plautine  and  Teren- 
tian  words  such  as  abitus  (3,  125),  a  substantive  which  does 
not,  according  to  the  new  Thesaurus,  occur  again  in  prose 

1  In  Att.  13,  47  extemplo  is  no  doubt  part  of  the  quotation. 


158  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

until  Pliny  the  Elder ;  the  verb  ablego  four  times  (2,  73 ; 
74 ;  79;  5,  82;  and  in  three  of  these,  by  the  way,  joined 
to  a  synonym  by  atque  or  -que\  and  nowhere  else  in  the 
orations,  nor,  save  for  a  couple  of  sporadic  cases,  again  in 
prose  until  Livy.  Eighteen  years  after  the  Verrines  we 
find  in  the  pro  Milone  the  Plautine  abnuo  (100),  its  only 
use  in  the  orations.  A  few  years  before  this,  the  pro 
Caelio  (56  B.C.)  yields  us  cum  adulescentiae  cupiditates  de- 
ferbuissent  (43),  which  seems  suggested  by  Ter.  Ad.  152 
sperabam  iam  defervisse  adulescentiam.  This  rare  verb 
deferveo  is  found  once  again  in  the  same  speech  (77),  and 
elsewhere  in  the  orations  only  in  that  one  of  the  year  66, 
a  part  of  which  we  have  examined  above  for  another  pur- 
pose, the  pro  Cluentio  (108).  In  view  of  all  this  we  have 
a  right  to  say  that  the  occurrence  of  extemplo  and  exspecto 
quam  mox  in  the  Rose.  Com.  does  not  prove  that  the  speech 
belongs  to  the  early  period. 

To  conclude,  then,  the  obstacles  raised  by  the  arguments 
of  Landgraf  are  by  no  means  sufficient  to  cause  me  to 
turn  aside,  to  emend  the  numeral  xv,  or  to  adopt  the  date 
of  76  for  the  oration.  The  year  66  is  the  earliest  upon 
which  a  natural  interpretation  of  the  fragment  will  allow 
us  to  fix. 


ON  THE   LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS1 

DURING  the  last  ten  years  the  question  of  the  date  and 
the  authorship  of  'Vitruvius  de  Architectura '  has 
been  revived  after  a  long  slumber.  In  1896,  Professor  J.  L. 
Ussing  published  a  treatise  in  Danish,  in  which  his  object 
was  to  show  that  the  writer  of  that  work  was  not  an  archi- 
tect, but  an  amateur  who  lived  about  the  middle  of  the  third 
century  of  our  era,  and  who  was  a  mere  compiler,  draw- 
ing chiefly  from  Varro.  Two  years  later,  in  1898,  this 
treatise,  much  enlarged,  was  translated  into  English  and 
carefully  revised  by  the  author,  and  in  this  form  it  was 
published  in  London  by  the  Royal  British  Institute  of 
Architects  under  the  title  Observations  on  Vitruvius  de 
Architectura  Libri  Decem,  with  special  regard  to  the  time 
at  which  this  work  was  written.  To  prove  his  point, 
Ussing  made  use  of  two  kinds  of  arguments,  the  first  being 
based  upon  the  language  and  style,  and  the  second  upon 
the  subject-matter  of  the  work.  Both  the  original  Danish 
and  the  translation  into  English  have  attracted  the  atten- 
tion of  classical  students  and  architects  in  no  small  degree. 
Still  more  recently  a  French  scholar,  M.  Victor  Mortet, 
has  written  a  series  of  articles  entitled  Recherches  Critiques 
sur  Vitruve  et  son  CEuvre  in  the  Revue  Archtologique 

1  From  the  Proceedings  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences, 
1906,  xli,  467-502. 

159 


l6o  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

(1902,  pp.  39-81;  1904,  pp.  222-233;  382-393)  in  which 
he  holds  that  our  author  wrote  during  the  reign  of  the 
Emperor  Titus.  His  arguments  depend  almost  altogether 
upon  the  contents  of  the  work,  not  upon  its  language  and 
style,  which  he  does  not  treat  in  any  detail. 

In  fact,  it  is  to  the  nature  of  the  contents  of  Vitruvius 
that  attention  has  been  almost  entirely  directed  by  those 
who  have  written  upon  the  subject  of  his  date.  Scholars 
who  have  examined  the  question  are  familiar  in  this  con- 
nection with  the  names  of  Newton,  Hirt,  Schultz,  Osann, 
Detlefsen,  Diels,  Oehmichen,  Thiel,  Degering,  and  others 
to  whose  writings  there  is  no  need  of  further  reference 
here.  To  be  sure,  Praun  in  his  Bemerkungen  zur  Syntax 
des  Vitruv,  Bamberg,  1885,  and  Eberhard  in  his  two  pro- 
grammes De  Vitruvii  genere  dicendi,  I>  Pforzheim,  1887, 
and  II,  Durlach,  1888,  have  made  careful  and  valuable 
studies  in  the  language  of  Vitruvius,  but  neither  of  them 
endeavored  to  show  anything  about  his  date,  accepting 
the  common  view  that  he  wrote  under  Augustus.1  Con- 
sequently when  Ussing  made  use  of  arguments  based 
upon  language  and  style  he  was  opening  an  almost  new 
field,  although  for  his  collection  of  examples  he  relied 
chiefly  upon  Praun.  His  use  of  these  arguments  seems 
to  have  had  a  considerable  effect  upon  scholars  known 
personally  to  me ;  further,  his  conclusion  was  accepted  by 
Lanciani  (Bullettino  Communale,  1899,  p.  24,  n.  2);  and  it 
led  Wolfflin  to  the  statement  that  the  case  must  be  consid- 

1  Such  was  also  the  attitude  of  Richardson  in  his  article  in  the  Harvard 
Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  1890,  i,  153  ff.  The  dissertation  of  Stock,  De 
Vitruvii  sermone,  Berlin,  1888,  is  of  no  value  for  our  purposes.  The  treatises 
of  H.  Ulrich,  De  Vitritvii  copia  verborum,  I,  Frankenthal,  1883,  and  II, 
Schwabach,  1885,  I  know  only  from  the  review  in  Wolfflin's  Archiv,  i,  126. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  l6l 

ered  as  once  more  reopened  for  further  discussion  (Arckiv, 
x,  301).  This  dictum  caused  Degering  in  his  article  on 
Etruscan  temples  (Gott.  Nackrichten,  Phil.-Hist.  Kl.,  1897, 
2,  137)  to  think  that  Ussing  might  possibly  be  in  the  right, 
although  recently  (Rhein.  Mus.  1902,  Ivii,  p.  8)  he  has 
supported  the  contrary  view  on  grounds  of  subject-matter. 
But  neither  he  nor  any  one  of  the  reviewers l  of  Ussing's 
treatise  has  published  a  detailed  study  of  Ussing's  linguis- 
tic and  stylistic  arguments  with  a  view  to  determining 
whether  they  really  do  furnish  evidence  of  a  late  date  of 
composition.  It  seems  worth  while,  therefore,  to  examine 
them  closely,  and  this  I  propose  to  do  in  the  following 
article.  Ussing's  contention  is  that  the  phenomena  to 
which  he  draws  attention  'point  to  the  decadence  of 
the  Latin  language  and  to  its  transition  to  the  Romance 
tongues.'  I  shall  inquire  whether  these  phenomena  or 
traces  of  them  are  found  in  republican  Latin  writers  and 
in  the  Augustan  and  Silver  ages. 

But  before  beginning  this  inquiry  three  observations  are 
necessary.  In  the  first  place,  we  must  never  forget  that 
in  '  Vitruvius  de  Architectura '  we  are  dealing  with  a  work 
which,  if  it  was  composed  before  the  end  of  the  Augustan 
age,  is  absolutely  unique  in  its  kind.  We  have  no  other 
prose  work  on  a  technical  or  scientific  subject  (unless  we 
include  agriculture  among  such  subjects)  written  in  Latin 
as  early  as  this  period,  and  we  have  no  other  treatise  on 
architecture,  either  in  Greek  or  in  Latin,  coming  down  to 
us  from  antiquity.  And  even  in  other  fields  than  science, 

1  The  chief  of  these  are  to  be  found  in  Berl.  Phil.  IVoch.,  1897,  773  ff- 
(by  Krohn);  Revue  de  Philologie,  xxi,  118  ff. ;  Bursian's  Jahresbericht,  1901, 
cviii,  118  ff.  (by  W.  Schmidt);  Journal  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects, 
3d  Ser.,  1899,  149  ff.  (by  Brown) ;  Athenaeum,  1897,  586. 


T62  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

the  amount  of  Latin  prose  of  the  Augustan  age  that  has 
survived  to  us  is  really  quite  small,  so  that  for  all  these 
reasons  a  standard  or  norm  of  comparison  for  the  prose  of 
that  age  is  hard  to  obtain.  But  secondly,  I  am  not  con- 
cerned in  this  article  to  distinguish  too  exactly  between 
the  prose  of  the  Augustan  and  that  of  the  Silver  age,  nor 
to  show  that  'Vitruvius  de  Architectura '  was  composed 
under  Augustus  rather  than  under  Titus.  Ussing  argues 
that  it  is  a  work  of  the  third  century.  If  I  can  show  that 
the  linguistic  and  stylistic  peculiarities  upon  which  he  re- 
lies are  found  in  the  writings  of  the  republic  and  early 
empire,  it  will  be  enough  for  my  present  purpose.  The 
decision  between  the  time  of  Augustus  and  the  time  of 
Titus  is  a  different  matter,  and  whether  it  is  to  be  reached 
by  means  of  arguments  drawn  from  the  language  or  from 
the  subject-matter1  does  not  at  this  moment  concern  me, 
although  it  will,  I  hope,  be  treated  before  long  in  another 
article.  Thirdly,  the  whole  gist  of  the  linguistic  part  of 
Ussing's  argument  seems  to  consist  in  his  belief  that  if  a 
writer  lived  in  the  '  classical  period '  his  style  must  there- 
fore be  'classic.'  This  is  a  pure  assumption,  and  it  is 
confuted  by  all  actual  experience.  Thus,  a  man  to-day 
may  be  an  excellent  architect  or  may  excel  in  other  tech- 
nical and  scientific  pursuits,  and  he  may  have  received  a 
good  general  education,  —  yet  he  may  not  be  able  to  ex- 
press himself  in  writing  with  polish,  or  with  freedom, 
clearness,  or  even  always  with  mere  correctness.  Very 
many  such  men  are  among  the  writers  to-day.  Why 
should  we  think  that  there  were  no  such  men  living  and 
writing  in  the  classical  period  of  Latin  literature  ?  We 

1  For  a  few  notes  on  this,  see  below,  p.  225  fi. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  163 

know  that  there  were  such  men.  It  is  enough  to  compare 
the  correspondents  of  Cicero  with  Cicero  himself,  the 
authors  of  the  Bellum  Africum  and  Bellum  Hispaniense 
with  Caesar,  to  read  what  is  known  of  the  involved  and 
affected  style  of  the  great  patron  of  literature,  Maecenas, 
and  to  remember  that  Vergilium  ilia  felicitas  ingenii  in 
oratione  soluta  reliquit  (Sen.  Contr.  3,  praef .  8,  p.  243  K). 
Having  made  these  observations,  we  are  ready  to  proceed 
to  the  consideration  of  Ussing's  criticisms. 

He  thus  begins  (p.  4):  'One  of  the  peculiarities  which 
occur  especially  in  the  authors  of  the  later  period  of  the 
empire,  where  they  wanted  to  write  nicely  and  philosophi- 
cally, is  the  frequent  use  of  abstract  nouns,  even  in  the 
plural.  So  also  Vitruvius.'  —  Nobody  would  be  found  to 
deny  that  abstracts  are  common  in  late  Latin,  but  what  is 
omitted  from  Ussing's  statement  is  for  us  the  important 
fact,  viz. :  that  the  common  use  of  abstracts  began  long 
before  the  later  period  of  the  empire.  On  this  point,  see 
Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.,8  p.  430 :  '  In  der  Sprache  des 
Volkes  waren  die  Subst.  abstr.  gerade  nicht  unbeliebt,  wie 
ein  Blick  auf  dem  Wortschatz  des  Plautus  zeigt ;  aber 
immerhin  ist  erst  mit  Cicero  und  zwar  infolge  seiner  philo- 
sophischen  Studien  eine  Bereicherung  eingetreten.'  Thus, 
to  illustrate,  I  may  take  a  single  example:  the  abstract 
repugnantia  appears  first  in  Cicero's  philosophical  writings 
(T.  D.  4,  23;  29;  Off.  3,  17;  34);  and  it  is  used  in  the 
contemporary  Second  Philippic,  19  (see  Sihler  ad  loc.\ 
In  the  quotation  from  Schmalz  I  have  italicized  certain 
words  because  I  think  it  worth  observing  that  Cicero  was 
dealing  with  Greek  ideas  and  Greek  sources  at  the  time 
when  he  felt  the  need  of  enriching  Latin  with  new  ab- 


1 64  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

stracts.  May  not  this  in  large  measure  account  for  the 
great  number  of  abstracts  in  Vitruvius  ?  But  not  alto- 
gether, for  it  appears  that  the  Scriptores  Rei  Rusticae, 
even  the  earliest  from  Cato  and  Varro  to  Columella,  ex- 
hibit a  liking  for  abstracts l  which,  in  these  truly  Roman 
writers,  cannot  be  attributed  to  exigencies  due  to  the  use 
of  Greek  sources.  The  fact  is  that  as  new  ideas  called  for 
expression  in  Latin  prose,  the  avoidance  of  abstract  sub- 
stantives in  the  expression  of  them  was  often  really  a  tour 
de  force,  and  only  the  best  writers  struggled  very  hard  to 
avoid  them  or,  when  they  used  them,  apologized  for  their 
use.2  And  finally  the  frequent  employment  of  abstracts 
in  the  correspondence  of  Cicero  shows  that  they  were  also 
common  in  the  colloquial  language  of  the  educated  and 
used  as  a  briefer  form  of  expression  of  thought  than  that 
which  the  master  reserved  for  his  greater  works.3 

Ussing  proceeds  :  '  Among  abstract  nouns  which  appear 
only  in  his  writings  I  will  mention  ignotitia  (64,  4 4),  inde- 
centia  (174,  9),  pervolitantia  (232,  3),  nascentia  (232,  17), 
crescentia  (238,  14;  23;  239,  3),  commensus  =  mensura  (15, 
25;  31,3;  65,  25;  103,  21  ;  134,  ii).'  — Of  these,  it  may 
in  the  first  place  be  remarked  that  Ussing's  statement  is 
not  exact,  for  three  of  them  do  appear  in  other  writers : 
ignotitia,  Gell.  16,  13,  9;  indecentia,  Gael.  Aurel.  Chron.  3, 
8  (p.  254,  Vicat);  nascentia,  see  Ronsch,  Itala  u.  Vulgata, 

1  See  Cooper,  Word  Formation  in  the  Sermo  Plebeius,  p.  2,  and  the  lists, 

PP-  5-5°- 

2  Cooper,  ibid.,  p.  xxxiii  f. 

3  Cf.  Stinner,  de  eo  quo  Cicero  in  Epistolis  usus  est  sermone,  p.  7,  and  such 
an  array  as  that  in  Cooper,  p.  6,  where  we  have  24  abstracts  in  -tio  occurring 
earliest  in  Cicero's  letters. 

4  For  convenience,  I  have  changed  Ussing's  references  to  the  pagination  of 
Rose. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  1 65 

p.  50.  To  be  sure  these  are  late  writers,  but  let  us,  before 
concluding  that  the  occurrence,  say  of  ignotitia,  in  Vitru- 
vius  is  a  proof  that  the  work  which  goes  under  his  name 
is  a  late  production,  inquire  what  other  abstracts  there  are 
which  he  could  have  used  in  the  sense  of  '  ignorance '  ? 
There  are  four,  ignomntia,  ignoratio,  inscientia,  and  insci- 
tia.  But  all  of  these  are  new  contributions  to  the  enrich- 
ment of  the  language  made,  so  far  as  we  know,  in  the  time 
of  Cicero  or  by  him.  The  first,  as  we  know,  did  not  please 
him  and  it  is  usually  avoided  (Schmalz,  Antibarbarus?  i, 
p.  6 1 8).  Vitruvius  does  not  use  any  one  of  the  four, 
but  has  instead  once  ignotitia,  a  violation  of  the  rules  of 
composition  (the  only  one  of  this  sort  in  Vitruvius),  but 
paralleled  by  insatietas  (Plaut),  intemperies  (Plaut.,  Cic.), 
invaletudo  (Cic.),  inreligio  (Auct.  ad  Herenn.).  Of  course 
I  am  aware  that  the  last  two  have  been  emended  away, 
yet  see  Wolfflin,  Archiv,  iv,  p.  403.  And  ignotitia  is  not 
surprising  in  a  writer  who  has  notitia  three  times  (5,  12; 
7»  r35  !33»  27)  in  the  sense  of  'knowledge.'  The  second 
abstract,  indecentia,  would  be  surprising  if  the  truth  were, 
as  one  might  gather  from  the  Lexicon  and  from  Schmalz 
(ibid.,  p.  660),  that  indecens  first  appears  in  the  Silver  age. 
But  Vitruvius  has  it  only  three  lines  below  (174,  12),  and 
why  is  he  led  to  employ  these  words  ?  Because  he  is 
employing  them  technically  in  an  anecdote  illustrative  of 
sins  against  propriety  (decor)  in  art  (173,  19), — propriety, 
which  with  him  is  one  of  the  six  component  elements  of 
true  architecture  (n,  12  ff.),  and  a  subject  to  which  he 
frequently  alludes.1  In  thinking  of  decor  he  forms  inde- 

1  Praun,  Syntax  des  Vitruv,  p.  43,  has  also  urged  that  in  the  whole  anec- 
dote Vitruvius  is  following  a  Greek  source. 


!66  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

centia  as  naturally  as  Cicero,  thinking  of  dolor,  forms  indo- 
lentia  (Fin.  2,  11).  The  third  abstract,  nascentia,  occurs 
in  the  context  non  e  nascentia  sed  ex  conceptione  genethlio- 
logiae  rationes  explicatas,  where  Vitruvius  is  referring  to 
those  astrologers  who  based  horoscopes  not  on  the  moment 
of  birth  but  on  that  of  conception.  Here  the  Greek  techni- 
cal terms  were  yevecris  or  e/cref  t9  and  o-uXX^i/rt? ;  cf .  Sext. 
Emp.  p.  737,  1 8  Bk. :  rrjv  Se  yeve<riv  rwv  VTTO  rrjv 
trea'ovfievwv  ap%a'iicd)T€pov  ijroi  airo  rr)9  rov  ( 
/8oA,^5  /col  <ri;\X^i/rea)9  \a/j,/3dveiv  rj  cnrb  rrf^  e/CTe'£ea>9.  See 
also  Hippolytus,  Ref.  Haer.  4,  3.  Another  word  for  'birth' 
in  this  connection  was  a7roTe£i9  (Sext.  Emp.  p.  737,  7),  and 
the  simple  reft?  was  also  used  (ibid.,  p.  739,  12).  Vitru- 
vius's  conceptio  is  obviously  a  translation  of  a\}\\-r\^r^  and 
it  was  thus  used  by  Cicero  (Div.  2,  50).  For  yeveo-is  or 
aTToref  t?  what  should  he  have  used  ?  This  is  a  question 
which  seems  not  to  have  occurred  to  those  who  would 
blame  him  for  using  nascentia.  Cicero  does  indeed  avoid 
the  use  of  a  single  abstract  and  has  the  somewhat  clumsy 
phrases  ortus  eius  qui  nascatur  (Div.  2,  89),  ortus  nascen- 
tium  {Div.  2,  91 ;  see  also  Div.  2,  92 ;  94).  For  the  Augus- 
tan period  we  have  no  evidence,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
unless  it  be  found  in  Vitruvius.  In  Censorinus  we  have 
genesis  (Nat.  D.  13),  in  Tertullian  genitura  (De  Anima, 
25  fin.}.  Pliny  also  employs  both  of  these  words,  yet  not 
in  connection  with  astrology  (N.  H.  36,  19;  18,  202),  and 
Augustine  uses  genitura  like  Pliny  (Civ.  D.  5,  3).  Sue- 
tonius has  genitura  several  times:  once  in  the  general 
sense  of  '  birth '  (Nero,  6),  otherwise  meaning  '  horoscope ' 
or  '  nativity ' ;  he  also  has  genesis  at  least  twice  in  this  sense, 
(cf.  Petronius  39).  For  this  Tertullian  (Idol.  9)  has  nati- 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  1 67 

vitatem.  Thus  it  appears  that  except  in  Vitruvius  we  know 
of  no  early  abstract  used  for  '  birth '  in  connection  with  the 
horoscope,  and  that  the  late  writers  who  have  occasion  to 
speak  of  it  do  not  use  nascentia.  Its  occurrence  in  Vitru- 
vius, therefore,  cannot  be  taken  as  evidence  of  late  author- 
ship, but  quite  the  reverse,  for  a  late  writer  would  have 
used  genitura  or  genesis.  There  remain  the  three l  abstracts 
cited  by  Ussing  which  are  really  not  found  elsewhere  than 
in  Vitruvius.  The  first,  pervolitantia,  is  the  expression  by 
an  abstract  of  the  idea  expressed  by  pervolitat  (219,  10), 
both  employed  of  the  revolution  of  the  mundus  or  cae- 
lum.  Abstracts  in  -antia  occur  before  Vitruvius's  time : 
e.g.  fiagrantia  (Plaut,  Cic.),  incogitantia  (Plaut.),  errantia 
(Ace.),  vatiantia  (Lucr.).  The  second,  crescentia,  is  used 
three  times,  twice  to  denote  the  increasing  length  of  the 
hours  on  a  dial  (238,  14 ;  239,  3),  and  once  of  the  increas- 
ing length  of  days  (238,  23).  Both  are  employed  techni- 
cally and  in  their  contexts  are  no  more  objectionable  than 
Cicero's  indolentia  mentioned  above.  Of  the  third  ab- 
stract, Ussing  uses  the  expression  lcommensus  =  mensural 
But  this  seems  to  be  a  misapprehension.  Vitruvius  has 
mensura  fourteen  times,  always  in  the  simple  meaning  of 
'  measure '  (see  Nohl's  Index),  but  commensus  he  employs 
ten  times  (ibid.),  and  never  in  that  simple  sense,  but 
always  with  the  idea  of  comparative  or  proportionate  meas- 
urement, just  as  Cicero  employs  the  verb  commetior  in 
Tim.  33  :  siderum  ambitus  .  .  .  inter  se  numero  commetiun- 
tur ;  cf.  Inv.  i,  39:  nam  saepe  oportet  commetiri  cum  tern- 
pore  negotium.  Thus  we  have  in  Vitruvius  a  new  abstract 
employed  as  a  technical  term,  and  its  appearance  ought  to 

1  Of  course  he  might  have  cited  others :  see  Cooper's  lists. 


!68  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

be  no  surprise  at  any  period  in  an  author  who  has  so  much 
to  say  on  the  subject  of  the  importance  of  proportionate 
measurements  as  has  Vitruvius.1 

Continuing  his  remarks  about  abstracts,  Ussing  says: 
'  Striking  plurals  are  conscriptiones  (103,  24 ;  155, 10),  enidi- 
tiones  (2,  18;  36,  23),  scientiae  (10,  24:  62,  23;  233,  2), 
sollertiae  (158,  12).' —  Here  we  need  only  remark  that  con- 
scriptiones occurs  in  Cicero,  Cluent.  191,  and  scientiae  in 
Cicero,  D.  O.  i,  61 ;  C.  M.  78,  conscientiae'vn.  Cic.,  R.  A.  67. 
In  the  last  two  passages  in  Cicero  the  plurals  are  no  doubt 
influenced  by  other  plurals  in  the  passage  (C.  M.  78  :  tot 
artes,  tot  scientiae,  tot  inventa  ;  R.  A.  67  :  suae  malae  cogita- 
tiones  conscientiaeque  animi  terrenf),  and  the  same  may  be 
observed  in  the  Vitruvian  usages  of  this  plural  and  of 
enuf&wnef&nd  sollertiae^ ;  cf.  the  similar  use  of  ernditiones 
in  Cell. praef.  3.  But  why  delay  over  such  a  point?  The 
use  of  the  plural  of  abstracts,  though  great  in  late  authors, 
is  no  proof  of  the  late  authorship,  for  it  is  found  at  all 
periods  :  'besonders  bei  Plautus  in  verhaltnissmassig  grosser 
Zahl ;  in  klass.  Zeit  erweitert  sich  dieselbe  wesentlich  durch 
Cicero '  (Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.,3  p.  431).  Seneca  (Ep.  1 14, 
19)  criticises  the  plural  famas  in  Sallust  and  his  imitator 
Arruntius.  See  also  a  list  of  the  plurals  used  by  Mela,  in 
Zimmermann,  De  Pomponii  Melae  sermone,  p.  v  ff. 

Neither  is  a  late  date  assured  by  the  usage  to  which 
Ussing  next  draws  attention ;  '  Sometimes  these  abstract 
nouns  retain  so  much  of  their  verbal  character  that  the 

1  See  also  on  symmetria,  p.  170,  n.  I. 

*  It  must  also  be  observed  that  sollertiae  in  158,  12,  means  'instances  of 
skill';  cf.  Cic.  Q.  F.i,  i,  39:  iracundiae,  and  40:  avaritiae.  The  whole 
passage  is  misunderstood  by  the  translators.  It  means  '  by  compiling  from  an- 
tiquity remarkable  instances  of  the  skill  shown  by  genius.' 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  V1TRUVIUS  169 

author  finds  it  sufficient  to  add  only  est  instead  of  factum 
est,  as  in  cum  fuerit  fundamentorum  ad  solidum  depressio 
(15,  19),  and  cum  erit  moenium  c  onto  cando  rum  explicatio 
(20,  24).' — See  Schmalz  again,  p.  430,  where  this  use  is 
shown  to  be  not  foreign  to  Cicero,  and  cf.  also  Cic.  Pis. 
84  (accessio),  Rab.  4  (consensio),  Cat.  I,  32  (consensio). 

Ussing's  next  point  appears  to  be  based  upon  a  misunder- 
standing. He  says  :  '  One  of  the  words  frequently  occurring 
in  Vitruvius  is  symmetria  ;  according  to  Nohl's  Index,  it  is 
found  about  a  hundred  times.  At  the  time  of  Pliny  this 
word  is  still  a  stranger  to  the  Latin  language  ;  comp.  Hist. 
Nat.  34,  65  :  non  habet  Latinum  nomen  symmetria.  Pliny 
no  doubt  appreciated  his  own  Latin  style,  but  he  does  not 
carry  his  purifying  tendencies  so  far  as  to  exclude  every 
foreign  word,  if  it  was  generally  adopted  in  the  language  ; 
his  apology  testifies  to  the  fact  that  such  was  not  the  case 
with  symmetria.'  —  Here,  as  I  observed,  Ussing  seems  not  to 
understand  Pliny's  meaning.  He  was  writing  of  Lysippus 
and  of  the  greater  grace  and  freedom  from  bulkiness  which 
this  sculptor  exhibited  in  the  bodies  of  his  statues,  '  by 
which  they  were  made  to  seem  taller.'  Then  he  adds : 
non  habet  Latinum  nomen  symmetria  qtiam  diligentissime 
custodit,  that  is :  '  there  is  no  Latin  word  for  that  symmetry 
which  he  observed  so  carefully.'  What  Pliny  says  is  there- 
fore no  condemnation  of  the  use  of  the  word  symmetria, 
which  indeed  he  himself  employs  in  three  other  passages 
(34,  58 :  in  symmetria  diligentior,  a  comparison  of  Myron 
and  Polyclitus  ;  35,  67:  Parrha sin s primus  symmetrian  pic- 
turae  dedit ;  35,  128:  Euphranor  primus  videtur  usurpasse 
symmetrian},  but  a  definite  statement  that  when  a  Latin 
writer  is  talking  about  '  symmetry,'  he  must  use  the  Greek 


170 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 


word.  Now '  symmetry '  is  one  of  the  very  points  upon  which 
Vitruvius  most  insists  in  every  department  of  the  architect's 
profession.  Near  the  opening  of  his  work,  he  mentions  it 
as  one  of  the  six  components  of  good  architecture  (n,  12), 
and  soon  afterwards  he  devotes  ten  lines  to  a  definition  of 
what  it  is  (12,  14).  Having  done  this,  even  the  earliest  of 
Latin  prose  writers  would  be  fully  entitled  to  employ  the 
word  as  often  as  he  chose.  If  it  is  not  found  earlier  than 
Vitruvius,  this  is  simply  because  of  the  accident  that  there 
is  no  Latin  work  extant  in  which  there  was  so  much 
occasion  to  speak  of  '  symmetry  '  in  the  technical  sense.1 
Leaving  the  subject  of  abstracts,  Ussing  next  takes  up 
another  topic  in  which  he  is  equally  unfortunate.  '  Not 
infrequently,'  he  says,  '  words  are  found  in  a  different  con- 
nection and  different  signification  from  that  of  the  classical 
authors.  Thus  notitia  in  the  sense  of  "renown  "  (63,  6  ; 
!33»  6), ponere  "put  forth  "  (64,  30),  and  anteponere  "put 
forth  at  first"  (33, 4  and  10);  dignum  est  f or  operae pretium 
(46,  6) ;  similar  things  are  quoted  from  Vopiscus,  Lactan- 
tius,  and  Augustinus ;  necessitate  —  necessario  (246,  3).'  — 
By  the  phrase  '  classical  authors '  Ussing  must,  for  the  sake 
of  his  argument,  be  taken  as  meaning  authors  writing  in 
the  classical  period,  no  matter  what  their  reputation  for 
style  or  lack  of  it  may  be.  Therefore  we  are  entitled  to 
point  to  notitia  meaning  '  renown  '  in  Nepos,  Dion,  9 :  Hi 
propternotitiam  suntintromissi.  In  poetry  it  is  found  thus 
in  Ovid,  Pont.  3,  i,  50;  4,  8,  48.  Ussing's  example  of 
ponere,  in  the  sense  of  '  put  forth,'  disappears,  since  it  is  an 

1  It  may  be  worth  observing  that  Vitruvius  employs  his  new  formation  com- 
mensus  in  contexts  along  with  symmetria,  as  if  perhaps  he  felt  that  the  Greek 
term  needed  some  help  from  Latin :  see  15,  25;  31,  3;  134,  u;  138, 23  and  27. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  171 

emendation  for  exponere,  adopted  by  Rose  in  his  first  edition 
but  rightly  abandoned  in  his  second.  As  for  his  example 
of  anteponere,  it  should  be  written  as  two  words,  ante  ponere 
(so  Rose2;  cf.  Cic.  Fam.  i,  9,  21  :  ut  paulo  ante  posui\  and 
the  Vitruvian  employment  oipono  in  these  two  places  should 
be  compared  with  the  common  colloquial  usage  of  it,  as  for 
example  in  Cic.  Fin.  2,  31  ;  Legg.  2,  6;  Livy  10,  9,  12. 
For  the  use  of  the  impersonal  dignum  est  in  the  sense  of 
operae pretium,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  find  examples  (cf. 
for  instance  Plaut.  Ps.  1013,  and,  with  indignum,  Sail.  hig. 
79,  i),  but  the  real  peculiarity  in  the  Vitruvian  usage  is 
that  ut  with  the  subjunctive  follows,  the  whole  sentence  be- 
ing :  quae  si  prope  tirbem  essent,  dignum  esset  ut  ex  his 
officinis  omnia  opera  perficerentur.  This  impersonal  usage 
does  not  indeed  seem  to  occur  before  the  very  late  authors 
mentioned  by  Ussing  (cf.  Drager,  ii,  258).  A  very  similar 
employment  of  the  personal  digna  is,  however,  found  in 
Livy  24,  1 6,  19 :  digna  res  visa  ut,  etc.,  where  of  course 
the  relative  construction  would  be  as  impossible  as  in  the 
Vitruvian  sentence.1  Finally,  of  necessitate  used  in  the 
sense  of  necessario,  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  cannot  be 
paralleled  in  or  before  classical  times,  and  that  the  em- 
ployment of  the  ablative  of  an  abstract  instead  of  an  adverb 
is  one  of  the  characteristics  of  African  Latin  (Sittl,  die 
lokalen  Verschiedenheiten  der  lateinischen  Sprache,  p.  107). 
It  has  in  fact  been  observed  that  many  stylistic  peculiarities 
that  are  found  in  the  African  writers  occur  also  in  Vitru- 
vius  (Praun,  p.  13,  n.).  However,  if  the  ablative  of  any 
abstract  is  allowable  instead  of  an  adverb  it  would  surely 

1  For  the  great  variety  of  constructions  with  dignus  in  Vitruvius,  see  below 

p.  214  ff. 


172 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 


be  necessitate  ;  cf .  Caesar's  qua  necessitate  adductus,  B.  G. 
6,  12,  5,  qua  necessitate  permotus,  B.  C.  3,  24,  4,  with  the 
pleonastic  necessitate  coactus  of  Bell.  Afr.  55,  2  (cf.  21,  I  ; 
24,  4),  which  is  like  necessario  coacti  in  Ter.  y4«d?r.  632 ; 
/fe//.  //«•/>.  24,  2  ;  32,  i.  This  pleonasm  with  necessitas  is 
common  in  Vitruvius. 

Ussing's  next  remark,  as  he  himself  seems  to  be  con- 
scious, is  of  no  value  as  proof  of  late  authorship  :  '  In  a 
few  instances  videtur\s>  meant  to  signify  placet:  magnitu- 
dines  balinearum  videntur  fieri  pro  copia  hominum  (126, 
n);  itaque  minime  fistulis  plumbeis  aqua  duci  videtur 
(210,  13).  In  other  places  Vitruvius  correctly  adds  opor- 
tere,  so  that  the  omission  might  perhaps  rather  be  called 
a  peculiarity  of  style  in  the  author,  as  in  primo  volumine 
putavi  .  .  .  exponere  (36,  23).'  —  But  this  use  of  videtur 
cannot  be  called  a  peculiarity  of  Vitruvius  nor  evidence  of 
late  authorship,  for  the  passive  of  video  in  the  sense  of 
placet  or  So/ceZ  occurs  three  times  in  the  Bellum  Africum 
(5  ;  25,  i,  42,  i).  Of  putavi  exponere  it  might  be  thought 
that  as  the  verb  oportere  has  occurred  in  the  foregoing 
sentence  and  as  it  occurs  again  in  the  following  sentence, 
its  omission  with  putavi  may  be  excused  without  danger  of 
misunderstanding.  Or  perhaps  we  have  here  a  use  analo- 
gous to  that  of  cogito  in  the  sense  of  '  intend '  followed  by 
the  infinitive,  found  frequently  in  the  letters  as  well  as  in 
other  works  of  Cicero.1  However,  as  Ussing  himself  ob- 
serves, the  usage  may  be  attributed  to  the  author  himself 
rather  than  to  the  habits  of  a  late  period  of  Latinity  to 
which  it  has  not  been  shown  to  belong. 

Ussing's  next  observations  would  be  very  striking  in- 

1  See  Stinner,  p.  54  f. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  173 

deed,  if  they  were  found  to  bear  examination ;  but  this  is 
not  the  case.  '  Shall  we  consider  it  merely  accidental  that 
the  word  narrare,  which  was  generally  used  during  the 
classical  period,  does  not  occur  at  all  in  Vitruvius,  who 
only  uses  memorare ;  or  that  the  verb  ire  (without  prefix) 
appears  but  once,  whereas  we  frequently  find  vadere,  which 
in  Cicero  means  "  to  depart,"  and  only  in  Virgil  and  Ovid 
signifies  "  to  go,"  thence  entering  into  the  later  prose  and 
subsequently  into  the  Romance  languages,  entirely  super- 
seding the  genuine  Latin  word  ? '  —  The  first  of  these  ob- 
servations is  misleading.  It  is  true  that  Vitruvius  never 
uses  the  verb  narro  (in  any  form),  but  on  the  other  hand 
he  never  uses  the  active  voice  of  the  verb  memoro.  He 
has  the  verb  twelve  times,  always  in  the  passive.  Once  it 
is  used  absolutely  :  mors  eius  .  .  .  varie  memoratur  (i$$,  3). 
Five  times  it  is  used  with  a  personal  subject  and  the  active 
infinitive:  is  memoratur  dixisse  (62,  17;  cf.  161,  18;  280, 
18;  42,  27;  43,  6).  Six  times  it  is  used  with  a  personal 
subject  and  the  passive  infinitive :  inventio  sic  memoratur 
esse  facta  (86,  21;  cf.  177,  2;  199,  19;  231,  15;  272,  22; 
156,  5).  Now  suppose  that  narratur  or  narrantur  were 
found  in  these  eleven  passages :  we  should  at  once  be  told 
that  here  was  evidence  of  late  authorship,  for  this  is  a 
usage  which,  beginning  with  Livy,  is  found  in  the  Plinys, 
and  is  prevalent  in  late  Latin  (Schmalz,  Antibarbarus?  s.v. 
narrare}.  That  it  does  not  occur  in  Vitruvius,  therefore, 
is  significant  of  an  early  period,  if  it  is  significant  at  all. 
But  his  use  of  the  passive  of  memoro  is  classical,  though 
rare:  cf.  Cic.  V.  4,  107:  ^^b^  ea gesta  esse  memorantur.  It 
appears  to  be  nothing  more  than  a  bigger  word  for  dicitur, 
and  Praun  (p.  7)  remarks :  '  Vitruv  hat  wohl  nach  Art  der 


174 


ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 


Halbgebildeten  den  landlaufigen  Ausdruck  vermieden,  um 
durch  ein  selteneres  Wort  seiner  Rede  ein  schoneres  Ko- 
lorit  zu  geben.'  Next  let  us  examine  the  case  of  vado  and 
ire.  To  begin  with,  it  is  not  true  that  '  only  in  Virgil  and 
Ovid '  does  vado  signify  '  to  go.'  For  cf.  Ennius,  A.  281  M.  ; 
vadunt  solida  vi ;  A.  591  :  ingenti  vadit  cursu;  Auct.  He- 
renn.  2,  29 :  cum  feras  bestias  videamus  alacres  et  erectas 
vadere  ;  Catullus  63,  31  :  vaga  vadit  (sc.  Attis);  63,  86: 
(led)  vadit /remit  refringit  virgulta  pede  vago ;  Sallust,  lug. 
94,  6 :  Romani  instare,  fundere  ac  plerosque  tantum  modo 
sauciare,  dein  super  occisorum  corpora  vadere ;  Cic.  T.  D. 
i,  97 :  vadit  enim  in  eundem  carcerem  atque  in  eundem 
paucis  post  annis  scyphum  Socrates.  In  all  these  passages 
we  find  vado  used  in  the  sense  of  'go'  rather  than  'depart,' 
but  the  '  going '  indicated  in  them  is  something  more  than 
is  meant  by  the  everyday  sense  of  that  word ;  for  some- 
thing rather  more  grand  is  intended.  The  English  'move ' 
would  be  a  better  translation.  Here  it  is  interesting  to 
compare  with  the  Ciceronian  passage  Livy  2,  10,  5,  where 
of  Horatius  Codes  he  says  :  vadit  inde  in  primum  aditum 
pontis,  and  Weissenborn-M tiller  notes:  'er  geht  mit  ge- 
waltigem  Schritte,  paicpa  /3t/3a<?.'  See  also  Livy  6,  8,  2  and 
7,  24,  6.  Finally  we  have  vado  in  two  letters  of  Cicero : 
Att.  4,  10,  2 :  ad  eum  postridie  mane  vadebam  cum  haec 
scripsi ;  Att.  14,  n,  2:  Lentulus  Spinther  hodie  apud  me. 
Cras  mane  vadit.  I  believe  that  I  have  now  cited  all  the 
Ciceronian  passages  in  which  the  simple  vado  occurs,  and 
it  seems  probable  that  when  Ussing  speaks  of  vado  as 
meaning  '  to  depart '  in  this  author,  he  is  thinking  of  the 
two  occurrences  in  the  letters.  But  it  is  obvious  that  in 
them  it  is  only  the  context  that  authorizes  the  translation 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  175 

'  depart,'  which  would  have  applied  equally  well  to  iturus 
eram  for  instance,  if  it  had  stood  in  the  former  of  them. 
And  on  the  latter  Tyrrell  and  Purser  suggest  the  transla- 
tion '  passes  on  his  way,'  adding :  '  There  is  a  slight  poetical 
color  about  this  word ;  cf.  Stinner,  p.  16.'  Having  thus 
prepared  ourselves  to  understand  the  meaning  of  vado,  let 
us  turn  to  Vitruvius.  We  are  told  that  he  uses  ire  only 
once  but  vadere  'frequently.'  The  fact  is  that  he  uses 
a  form  of  the  verb  vado  five  times.  But  never  was  there 
a  case  in  which  statistics  were  more  misleading  if  we  con- 
clude from  them,  without  examining  the  contexts,  that  to 
Vitruvius  vado  and  eo  were  synonyms,  and  that  he  uses 
vado  in  the  everyday  sense  of  eo.  At  the  outset  we  must 
remember  that  Vitruvius  is  not  an  historian,  orator,  or 
dramatist,  and  that  consequently  we  should  not  expect  to 
find  the  verb  eo  used  often  by  him ;  he  has  little  occasion 
to  speak  of  anybody  as  'going'  anywhere  in  the  usual 
sense.  This  observation  alone  would  be  sufficient  to  ac- 
count for  the  absence  of  the  simple  verb  eo  from  his  work. 
Now  how  does  he  employ  the  verb  vado  ?  Five  times  he 
has  the  simple  verb.  Of  these  occurrences,  three  refer  to 
movements  of  the  sun  or  moon:  220,  13:  sol autem  signi 
spatium  quod  est  duodecuma  pars  mundi  mense  vertente 
vadens  transit ;  240,  2 :  itaque  quemadmodum  sol  per  side- 
rum  spatia  vadens  dilatat  contrahitque  dies  et  horas ;  22$, 
4 :  cum  (sc.  lund)  praeteriens  vadat  ad  orientis  caeli  partes. 
In  these  three  passages  we  have  no  common  '  going,'  but 
the  grand  movement  of  heavenly  bodies,  and  it  is  worth 
observing  that  Cicero  never  uses  the  simple  verb  eo  of 
movements  of  the  sun,  moon,  or  stars  in  his  orations  or 
philosophical  works.  He  has  elabor,  vagor,  erro,  and  the 


176  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

compounds  accedo,  antecedo,  discedo,  recedo,  anteverto,  per- 
agro,  subsequor,  abeo,  adeo,  and  obeo l  (see  Merguet's  Lexi- 
cons, s.  vv.  sol,  luna,  Stella],  The  other  two  passages  in 
which  Vitruvius  uses  the  simple  verb  vado  are  both  in 
prefaces,  in  which,  as  is  well  known,  our  author  often  aims 
at  a  higher  style  than  in  the  body  of  his  work.  The  first 
is  132,  8:  at  qui  non  doctrinarum  sed  felicitatis  praesidiis 
putaret  se  esse  vallatum,  labidis  itineribus  vadentem  non 
stabili  sed  infirma  conflictari  vita.  Here  the  picture  of  the 
foolish  man  who  depends  on  luck  rather  than  on  learning, 
'  moving  in  slippery  paths,'  is  appropriately  colored  by  the 
use  of  vadentem.  The  second  is  215,  25,  where  in  the 
famous  anecdote  about  Archimedes  it  is  said :  exsiluit  gau- 
dio  motus  de  solio  et  nudus  v  a  dens  do  mum  versus  significa- 
bat  clara  voce  invenisse  quod  quaereret.  Here  the  use  of 
vado  is  like  that  which  is  found  in  Cicero's  letters  as  cited 
above  (p.  174).  It  appears,  therefore,  that  there  is  noth- 
ing in  Vitruvius' s  use  of  the  simple  verb  which  is  at  vari- 
ance with  classical  examples.  On  the  contrary,  Ussing 
would  have  been  more  fortunate  had  he  criticised  the 
single  occurrence  in  Vitruvius  of  the  simple  verb  eo,  220, 
1 1  :  luna  .  .  .  caeli  circumitionem  pemirrens  ex  quo  signo 
coeperit  ire  ad  id  signum  revertendo  perficit  lunarem  men- 
sem ;  for  we  have  seen  that  it  is  not  Ciceronian  to  employ 
this  simple  verb  of  the  movements  of  heavenly  bodies. 
But  how  about  the  Vitruvian  use  of  the  compounds  of 
these  verbs  ?  Here  the  statistics  tell  the  opposite  tale,  for 
he  has  compounds  of  eo  (ad-,  ex-,  in-,  prod-,  red-,  sub-, 
intro-}  fifty-six  times  and  compounds  of  vado  only  twice, 

1  That  Vitruvius  also  uses  compounds  of  eo  may  be  seen,  for  example,  from 
two  of  the  passages  just  cited. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  177 

in  each  case  with  per-  (221,  24:  Satumi  (sc.  stelld)  .  .  . 
pervadens  per  signi  spatium  ;  226,  21  :  sol  signa  perva- 
dens).  Both  of  these  are  descriptive  of  the  movements  of 
heavenly  bodies,  and  the  compound  pervado  is  Ciceronian 
(e.g.  V.  3,  66;  N,  D.  2,  145).  To  conclude :  Vitruvius's 
use  of  vado  and  -vado,  six  times  in  the  present  participle 
and  once  in  the  form  vadat,  is  shown  by  an  examination 
of  the  contexts  to  be  no  proof  of  late  authorship. 

To  pass  on  to  Ussing's  next  point :  '  Is  it  accidental  that, 
after  the  fashion  of  more  recent  authors,  Vitruvius  fre- 
quently transcribes  the  simple  future  by  erit  utf  e.g.  7, 
10:  erit  ut  uterque  liberetur.  130,  27:  ita  erit  uti  possit 
turris  insuper  aedificari ;  144,  9:  tune  erit  ut  .  .  .  fiant. 
Drager,  Hist.  Synt.  2,  p.  267,  quotes  a  similar  example 
from  Apuleius,  Met.  2,  3  :  mmquam  erit  ut  non  apud  te 
devertar!  —  This  observation  is  drawn  from  Praun  (p.  51), 
who  cites  two  other  cases  (28,  9 :  tantum  erit  uti  .  .  .  ha- 
beant ;  92,  1 6 :  erit  ut  emendentur),  and  remarks  that  Vitru- 
vius has  only  twice  used  the  classical  (though  rare)  present 
tense  est  ut.  There  is,  however,  an  earlier  occurrence  of  erit 
ttt  than  that  of  Apuleius ;  cf.  Auct.  ad  Herenn.  4,  41 :  Sed 
non  erit,  tamqnam  inplerisque,  ut,  cum  velimus  ea(sc.  exorna- 
tione)  possimus  uti.  We  have,  therefore,  no  evidence  of  '  the 
fashion  of  recent  writers  '  in  the  Vitruvian  passages,  partic- 
ularly when  we  consider  that  Apuleius  is  the  only  '  recent 
writer'  cited  in  this  connection,  and  that  his  use  of  erit  ut  is 
negatived.  So  is  the  use  in  the  Auct.  ad  Herenn.,  while  the 
Vitruvian  uses  are  all  positive.  But  while  the  present  tense 
est  ut  is  usual  in  periphrases,  we  also  have/«//  ut,  Cic.  Cael. 
48,  and  why  then  should  we  be  surprised  at  erit  ut  (not 
exactly  paralleled  elsewhere)  in  a  writer  like  Vitruvius  ? 


178  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Ussing  proceeds :  '  With  regard  to  the  comparison  of 
adjectives,  we  often  find  the  comparative  unnecessarily 
emphasized  :  maxime  facilius  (3,  23),  maxime  tutiores  (22, 
15),  maxime  utiliores  (38,  15),  quo  magis  ex  meliore  vino 
parabitur  (180,  22),  potius  digniores  (134,  i).  Compare 
nimium  penitus  (211,  7).  Similarly  Lactant.  Instit.  i,  21, 
10 :  maxime  dulcior.  Commodian,  Apolog.  5  :  plus  levior. 
Sulpicius  Severus,  Chron.  2,  46,  5  :  //«j  iusto  inflatior'  — 
Here  we  may  begin  by  pointing  out  that  the  example  with 
potius  (134,  i)  is  not  like  the  others  on  account  of  the  fol- 
lowing quam,  the  context  reading  thus :  indicant  .  .  .  ipsos 
potius  digniores  esse  ad  suam  voluntatem  quam  ad  alienam 
pecuniae  consumere  summam.  With  this  cf .  Nepos  9,  5,  2  : 
potius  patriae  opes  augeri  quam  regis  maluit ;  Cic.  D.  O. 
2,  300:  cum  quidem  eifuerit  optabilius  oblivisci  posse  potius 
quod  meminisse  nollet  quam  quod  semel  audisset  vidissetque 
meminisse.  Next,  for  the  example  with  magis  we  have 
early  parallels  in  Plautus  (e.g.  Capt.  644;  Men.  978,  and 
see  Wolfflin,  Comparation,  p.  46) ;  in  the  classical  period 
in  the  Bellum  Africum,  48,  3  :  magis  suspensiore  animo ; 
54,  5  :  magis  studiosiores,  and  in  the  time  of  the  Emperor 
Claudius  in  Pomponius  Mela  2,  86 :  magisque  et  magis 
latior.  For  maxime  with  a  comparative  I  know  of  no 
instances  before  very  late  Latin,  but  it  ought  not  to  sur- 
prise us  in  Vitruvius,  because,  as  Wolfflin  has  remarked 
(p.  47,  cf.  63  ff.)  in  the  case  of  the  example  from  Lactan- 
tius  cited  by  Ussing,  these  are  instances  in  which  the  com- 
parative has  lost  its  force  and  is  used  like  a  positive.  No 
reader  of  Vitruvius  is  unfamiliar  with  this  frequently  recur- 
ring phenomenon  (see  e.g.  Praun,  p.  80).  Finally  I  fail  to 
see  how  the  example  nimium  penitus  (211,7)  figures  among 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  179 

emphasized  comparatives.  It  means  '  too  deep.'  For  peni- 
tus  modified  by  another  adverb,  see  Cic.  Clu.  4 :  tarn  peni- 
tus ;  V.  2,  169:  bene  penitus ;  and  examples  of  nimium 
modifying  an  adverb  are  not  uncommon  (cf.  e.g.  Cic.  Cat. 
i,  10:  nimium  diti). 

Next  we  find :  '  The  superlative  is  repeatedly  placed 
parallel  to  a  positive  in  such  a  way  that  the  difference  is 
effaced:  53,  12:  si  sit  optima  seu  vitiosa ;  188,  12:  quae 
gravissimae  duraeque  et  insuaves  sunt  partes.  Of  course 
there  are  cases  where  no  harm  is  done  by  such  a  juxtapo- 
sition, and  where  it  may  occur  even  in  classical  authors ; 
see  Wolfflin,  Comparation,  p.  54  f. ;  but  this  is  not  the  case 
here.'  —  The  selection  of  the  two  Vitruvian  examples  is 
not  very  fortunate,  because  it  might  be  thought,  particu- 
larly in  the  first,  that  the  difference  is  not  'effaced.'  He 
is  there  recommending  the  use  of  the  'best'  brick,  and  this 
is  contrasted  with  brick  which  is  'faulty,'  though  not  neces- 
sarily the  'worst.'  In  the  other  example,  the  foregoing 
clause  should  be  observed.  However,  what  Ussing  really 
means  to  criticise  is  the  lack  of  symmetry  shown  in  the 
coupling  of  a  positive  with  a  superlative,  a  lack  of  which 
he  thinks  that  Cicero  and  writers  of  his  taste  would  not  be 
guilty  (yet  see  Cic.  D.  N.  3,  68  :  recte  et  verissume\  and  for 
this  purpose  better  examples  had  been  24,  6 :  parvo  brevis- 
simoque  ;  83,  15  :  dignam  et  utilissimam  ;  and  others  cited 
by  Praun  (p.  79).  This  unsymmetrical  coupling  is,  to  be 
sure,  found  very  often  in  late  Latin,  particularly  in  the 
Africans,1  but  we  must  not  think  that  there  is  no  trace  of 
it  in  early  or  Augustan  Latin.  Thus  we  find  :  Plaut.  Rud. 
1321 :  miserum  istuc  verbum  et  pessumum  ;  Ter.  Ph.  226  : 

1  See  Sittl,  die  lokalen  Verschiedenheiten,  p.  101  ff. 


l8o  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

iustam  facilem  opttimam ;  Sail.  Or.  Lepidi  I  :  maxumi  et 
clari  estis ;  Dec.  Brutus  ap.  Cic.  Fam.  n,  19,  2:  seditio- 
sum  et  incertissimum.  And  a  little  later,  in  Velleius  2,  69 : 
acri  atque  prosperrimo  bello.  We  have  even  the  compara- 
tive and  superlative  joined  in  Bell.  Afr.  56,  2 :  inlustriores 
notissimique,  formerly  emended  away  by  Wolfflin,  but 
allowed  in  his  edition  of  1896. 

The  next  set  of  evidences  which  Ussing  presents  is  as 
follows :  '  Among  the  adverbs  may  be  mentioned  aliter, 
not  in  the  sense  of  "  otherwise,"  but  "  differently  from  one 
another  " ;  33,  24 :  in  eo  hominum  congressu  cum  profunde- 
bantur  aliter  e  spiritu  voces;  cf.  218,  23  :  itaque  longe  aliter 
distant  desctiptiones  horologiorum  locorum  mutationibus ; 
forte  —  fortasse :  133,  3:  Sed  forte  nonnulli  haec  levia 
iudicantes  putant,  etc. ;  parve  :  229,  14  :  parve  per  eos  flec- 
titur  delphinus ;  temperate  (with  genitive  as  parum}\  18, 
6 :  volucres  minus  habent  terreni,  minus  umoris,  caloris 
temperate,  aeris  multumt  cf.  45,  20:  umoris  autem  tempe- 
rate;  57,  4:  umoris  temperate ;  57,  21  :  terreni  temperate? 
—  Here  it  must  first  be  observed  that  although  aliter  is 
strangely  used  by  Vitruvius  in  the  two  passages  cited,1 
yet  since  no  parallel  is  quoted  by  Ussing  or  Praun  2  from 
a  late  author,  this  again  must  be  set  down  as  a  peculiarity 
of  the  style  of  Vitruvius3  (see  above,  p.  172).  Of  forte  in 

1  And  in  14,  24:    cum  ad  usum  patrum  familiarum  aut  ad  pecuniae 
copiam  aut  ad  eloquentiae  dignitatem  atdificia  aliter  disponentur.     Here  the 
best  manuscripts  have  alte,  but  the  emendation  (found  indeed  in  L)  is  certain. 
Vitruvius  has  aliter  elsewhere  15  times  in  the  usual  applications. 

2  Or  cited  in  the  Thesaurus,  where  Vitr.  33,  24  is  not  included  at  all,  and 
where  the  peculiarity  of  218,  23  is  overlooked ;   see   Thesaurus,  s.v.  alius, 
P-  1653,  52. 

8  The  nearest  resemblance  is  Seneca,  Q.  N.  4,  praef.  22,  as  it  is  quoted  in 
the  Thesaurus,  p.  1656, 40:  uno  enim  temfore  (Sicilia)  vidit  Pompeium  Lepi- 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  l8l 

the  sense  oifortasse,  I  know  no  occurrence  in  prose  before 
or  in  the  Augustan  age.  Besides  133,  3  (cited  by  Ussing), 
we  find  it  in  116,  7:  dicet  aliquis  forte.  It  also  occurs 
unobjectionably  with  si  in  24,  10  and  184,  22;  and  not  in 
the  sense  of  fortasse  twice ;  168,  13  and  176,  12.  In  two 
out  of  six  occurrences  Vitruvius  violates  the  approved 
usage  and  writes  like  a  late  prose  author.  But  it  should 
not  be  forgotten  that  a  poet  of  the  best  period  used  forte 
thus  :  cf.  Hor.  Epod.  16,  15  :  forte  quid  expediat  quaeritis. 
As  for  '  the  adverb  parve,'  no  student  of  Vitruvius  should 
be  willing  to  base  any  statement  about  style  on  the  obvi- 
ously corrupt  passage  in  which  it  appears  in  the  manu- 
scripts (see  Rose's  apparatus  criticus,  and  Kaibel,  Hermes 
29>  95  5  Thiele,  Himmelbilder  55).  Of  the  Vitruvian  usage 
of  temperate  (in  itself  a  perfectly  good  Ciceronian  adverb) 
with  the  genitive,  three  things  are  to  be  remarked :  first, 
that  it  cannot  be  used  as  evidence  of  late  authorship,  be- 
cause no  late  author  is  cited  as  employing  it ;  second,  that 
it  is  not  in  meaning  the  equivalent  of  pariim,  for  in  57,  4 
the  words  umoris  temperate  are  followed  by  parum  terreni 
(cf.  also  45,  20);  third,  that  the  genitive  with  temperate 
is  evidently  due  to  the  influence  of  the  other  perfectly  regular 
genitives  with  minus,  parum,  minimun,  multumt  which  are 
found  in  the  contexts  of  the  four  passages  under  consideration. 

dumquc  ex  maxima  fastigio  aliter  ad  extrema  deiectos,  cum  Pompeius  alienum 
exercitum  fugeret,  Lepidus  suum.  Editions  here  with  manuscripts  cited  in 
them  have  aliter  aliterque.  Some  good  reason  for  the  reading  in  the  The- 
saurus will,  I  suppose,  be  given  by  Gercke,  who  made  the  excerpts  from  this 
work  of  Seneca's  for  it,  in  his  forthcoming  edition  of  the  Q.  N.  But  it  seems 
to  me  that,  with  this  reading,  the  passage  is  erroneously  placed  in  the  The- 
saurus under  the  caption  aliter  et  {-que}.  Another  use  of  aliter  in  the  sense 
of  '  differently '  is  found  in  Pomp.  Mela  I,  57  :  multo  aliter  a  ceteris  agunt. 


r82  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

Still  speaking  of  adverbs,  Ussing  continues :  '  iuxta  = 
secundum,  "  according  to,"  10,  23  :  iuxta  necessitate™.  The 
same  occurs  in  Justinus  and  later.  Trans  without  an 
object,  "  on  the  other  side,"  220,  I  :  circumacta  trans  locis 
patentibus  ex  obscuris  egreditur  ad  lucem,  elsewhere  in 
clerical  authors,  cf.  Arckiv,  iv,  p.  248.  Trans  contra, 
"opposite  to,"  219,  7  and  225,  13,  as  in  Aurelius  Victor 
and  Boethius,  cf.  Archiv,  v,  p.  319  ff.'  —  The  context  in 
which  the  strange  phrase  iuxta  necessitatem  occurs,  is  as 
follows  :  cum  .  .  .  ratio  propter  amplitudinem  rei  permittat 
non  iuxta  necessitatem  summas  sed  etiam  mediocres  scien- 
tias  habere  disciplinarum.  This  is  certainly  a  badly  ex- 
pressed sentence,  and  we  may  observe  the  usage  of  permitto 
with  the  infinitive  as  found  in  Livy,  later  historians  and 
ecclesiastical  writers,  which  would  be  stamped  as  vulgar 
did  it  not  occur  once  in  Cicero  (  Verr.  5,  22),  and  also  an 
accumulation  of  plurals  of  abstracts  such  as  a  polished 
writer  would  have  avoided.  The  phrase  iuxta  necessitatem 
occurs  nowhere  else  to  my  knowledge,  but  the  word  neces- 
sitas  is  a  favorite  one  with  Vitruvius  (27  times,  according 
to  Nohl's  Index;  cf.  especially  the  phrase  ad  necessitatem 
in  260,  21  and  266,  3),  and  the  use  of  iuxta  in  the  sense 
of  '  conformably  to,'  '  as  the  result  of,'  '  gemass,'  besides 
here,  is  found  first,  not  in  Justinus,  but  in  Livy  39,  9,  6  : 
huic  consuetude  iuxta  vicinitatem  cum  Aebutio  fuit  (see 
Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.?  p.  263).  In  Vitruvius  the  phrase 
must  mean,  'of  necessity,'  'necessarily,'  but  to  say  just 
what  it  modifies  is  a  difficult  matter.1  In  his  observation 

1  Generally  it  has  been  taken  with  summas,  but,  so  taken,  Vitruvius  would 
be  saying  that  an  architect  need  not  possess  '  necessarily  the  highest,'  but  only 
a  moderate  knowledge  of  all  the  arts  and  sciences  which  he  has  mentioned  in 
§§  3-16.  What  follows,  however,  would  seem  to  show  that  he  feels  that 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  183 

about  trans,  Ussing  has  certainly  pointed  to  a  misuse  of 
that  word  which  is  not  found  elsewhere  before  the  ecclesi- 
astical writers.  This  preposition  was  originally  a  participle 
(Thielmann,  Archiv,  iv,  248),  not  an  adverb  like  other 
prepositions,  and  we  have  no  early  parallel  of  its  employ- 
ment as  an  adverb,  though  we  might  expect  to  find  it  in 
the  less  careful  writers  from  analogy  with  the  adverbial 
use  of  other  prepositions.  In  Vitruvius,  trans  contra  seems 
to  be  a  translation  of  Karavrifcpv,  especially  in  219,  7, 
where  he  had  in  mind  the  pseudo- Aristotelian  de  mundo,  2, 
or  a  similar  account  of  the  Tro'Xot.  It  may  also  be  observed 
that  Vitruvius  uses  intra  as  an  adverb  half  a  dozen  times 
(see  Nohl's  Index),  a  usage  commonly  called  post-Augus- 
tan, but  found  in  Bell.  Hisp.  35,  2  (Kohler,  Act.  Erlang.  i, 
p.  400) ;  also  adversus  five  times  as  an  adverb,  —  found 
thus  in  prose  not  elsewhere  before  Nepos  ( Thesaurus,  s.  v. 
p.  85 1,  48  ff.).  And  we  must  be  slow  to  stamp  trans  contra 

practically  the  architect  cannot  be  expected  to  have  even  a  moderate  amount 
of  knowledge  of  them  all.  The  reading  of  S°  is  perhaps,  therefore,  worth 
consideration,  especially  in  view  of  Degering's  estimate  of  the  value  of  this 
manuscript  {Berl.  Phil.  Woch.,  1900,  p.  9  ff.);  for  here  we  find  iuxta  necessi- 
tatem  standing  not  before  sum  mas  but  before  mediocres:  non  summas  sed 
etiam  iuxta  necessitatem  mediocres.  And  we  may  go  further,  for  my  friend 
Professor  A.  A.  Howard  has  suggested  that  a  second  non  appears  to  be  lack- 
ing in  the  clause  sed .  .  .  mediocres.  If  Vitruvius  was  written  in  lines  of  from 
17  to  20  letters,  like  Livy,  perhaps  here  originally  stood: 

NONSVMMASSEDETIAM 

NONIVXTANECESSITATEM 

MEDIOCRESSCIENTIAS 

Then  the  accidental  omission  of  the  second  line  by  the  scribe  of  the  archetype 
of  our  manuscripts  and  its  insertion  in  the  margin  might  give  rise  to  the 
differences  found  in  HG  on  the  one  hand,  and  Sc  on  the  other.  The  restora- 
tion of  this  second  non  gives  to  the  passage  the  meaning  which  Eberhard  (de 
Vitruvii  genere  dicendi,  I,  p.  9)  desired  to  find  in  it,  though  with  his  reading 
this  would  not  be  possible. 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

as  a  necessarily  late  doublet,  lest  we  meet  with  the  fate  of 
that  'grammaticus  haud  incelebri  nomine'  in  Gellius  (19, 
10),  who  sneered  at  praeterpropter  only  to  be  confounded  by 
learning  that  it  had  been  used  by  Ennius,  Cato,  and  Varro. 

Next  Ussing  turns  to  prepositions,  saying:  'In  the  use 
of  prepositions  we  are  struck  by  several  peculiarities  which 
indicate  the  dissolution  of  the  language  :  ab,  indicating  the 
cause,  "because  of,"  in  58,  I  :  ab pondere  umoris  non  habent 
rigorem  .  .  .  ab  lentitudine  firmas  recipiunt  catenationes ; 
59,  6 :  ab  suci  vehementi  amaritate  ab  carie  aut  tinea  non 
nocetur.  Abt  "compared  with,"  has  been  —  no  doubt  cor- 
rectly —  substituted  by  Rose  for  ad  in  142,  2 :  non  enim 
atria  minora  ab  maioribus  easdem  possunt  habere  sym- 
metriarum  rationes,  a  habit  which  Wolfflin  in  Archiv,  vii, 
p.  125,  has  proved  to  exist  in  the  ancient  Latin  translations 
of  the  Bible,  Itala,  and  Vulgata,  and  which  is  analogous  to 
the  use  of  other  prepositions  such  as  prae,  super  or  supra, 
ultra'  —  These  criticisms  may  be  briefly  dismissed.  A 
glance  at  the  Thesaurus,  s.  v.  ab,  pp.  33-34,  will  be  enough 
to  show  that  the  use  of  this  preposition  to  denote  cause  is 
no  evidence  of  the  '  dissolution  of  the  language,'  unless 
the  language  began  to  dissolve  with  Lucretius,  Varro,  Livy, 
and  the  Augustan  poets.  The  other  criticism,  about  ab, 
1  compared  with,'  is  taken  from  Praun  (p.  79),  who,  by  an 
oversight  foreign  to  his  usually  careful  work,  has  misinter- 
preted the  passage.  There  is  no  idea  of  comparison  here, 
for  ab  maioribus  does  not  depend  upon  minora.  The  sen- 
tence means :  '  In  the  case  of  smaller  atriums  the  sym- 
metrical proportions  cannot  be  the  same  as  in  larger.' 
See  the  Thesaurus,  s.  v.  ab,  p.  39,  55. 

'  Ad  is  placed  instead  of  the  dative  or  parallel  with  it,  as 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  185 

in  91,  3  :  metopae  quae  proximae  ad  angular es  triglyphos 
fiunt ;  182,4  :  hae  regiones  sunt  proximae  ad  septentrionem 
(equally  by  Euodius  in  Augustine,  Ep,  158,  2:  ad  finem 
mtae  proximits} ;  147,  I  :  lavationi  rusticae  ministratio  non 
erit  longe,  but  soon  after  :  ad  olearios  fructus  commoda  erit 
ministratio.  Equally  in  256,  16  :  ita  hortis  ad  inrigandum 
vel  ad  salinas  ad  temperandum  praebetur  aquae  multitudo  ; 
25 1,  1 8  :  ut  ad  solvendum  non  esset,  in  lieu  of  the  generally 
applied  solvendo.  "  On  the  whole,"  Praun  observes  on 
p.  65,  "  the  preposition  ad  with  the  gerund  or  the  gerun- 
dive has  extended  its  sphere  at  the  expense  of  the  other 
constructions,  the  genitive,  the  dative,  and  in  with  the 
ablative."  '  —  The  use  of/mrnvMtf  with  ad  and  the  accusa- 
tive is  found  much  earlier  than  Euodius ;  cf .  Varro,  L.  L. 
6,  8  :  ad  nos  versum  proxi mum  est  solstitium  ;  Lucr.  2, 135  : 
(ea  corpora  quae}  proxima  sunt  ad  viris  principiorum ; 
Pliny,  N.  H.  2,  64 :  ad  terrae  centrum  humillimae  atque 
proximae.  We  have  also  proprius  ad  in  Cicero,  Fin.  4,  64. 
It  must  not  be  thought  that  this  is  the  only  construction 
with  proximus  found  in  Vitruvius.  He  has  the  simple 
dative  twenty-one  times,  and  ad  with  the  accusative  only 
three  times  (add  135,  n  to  Ussing's  examples).  In  his 
second  set  of  examples  under  this  head  of  the  use  of  ad, 
Ussing  (following  Praun,  p.  89)  seems  to  think  that  we 
have  two  constructions  with  ministratio  erit,  first  the 
dative  and  then  ad  and  the  accusative.  But  this  latter 
belongs  to  commoda,  and  the  construction  is  that  which  is 
found  twice  on  the  preceding  page  (146,  6:  ad  omnes  res 
commoda;  146,  14:  ad  usum  commoda}.  Though  else- 
where rare,  yet  we  have  in  Caes.  B.  C.  3,  100,  3  :  tempore 
anni  commodiore  usus  ad  navigandum,  and  in  Ovid,  F.  2, 


ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

288 :  nee  satis  ad  cursus  commoda  vestis  erat.  It  cannot 
therefore  be  held  to  be  a  sign  of  the  '  dissolution  of  the 
language.'  In  the  third  set  of  examples  (256,  16)  Ussing 
with  Praun  (p.  64)  seems  to  have  taken  hortis  as  a  dative, 
and  to  have  thought  that  with  praebetur  we  have  both  a 
dative  and  an  accusative  with  ad.  But  it  seems  far  more 
probable,  if  not  certain,  that  we  have  here  two  locative 
constructions  :  hortis,  '  in  gardens '  (for  Vitruvius's  use  of 
the  locative  ablative  of  many  appellatives,  see  Nohl,  Anal. 
Vitr.,  p.  10,  and  observe  that  only  eight  lines  below  our 
passage  he  has  the  locative  ablative  locis  with  praebendum, 
256,  24  :  sin  autem  magis  altis  locis  erit  praebendum),  and 
ad  salinas,  '  at  saltworks.'  It  is  true  that  I  do  not  find  the 
locative  phrase  ad  salinas  in  any  other  writer,  but  this  is 
mere  accident,  for  it  is  an  expression  which  belongs  in  the 
class  of  other  locative  phrases  with  ad  cited  in  the  Thesau- 
rus, p.  522  f.1  And  Vitruvius  has  this  use  of  ad  else- 
where: e.g.  ad  villas  (148,  9),  ad  circtim,  ad  campum,  ad 
portum  (30,  12  f.).  It  is  worth  noting  that  by  another 
accident  ad  campum  (sc.  Martiuni)  seems  not  to  occur 
elsewhere  in  literature,  but  that  it  is  found  in  the  Monu- 
mentum  Ancyranum,  2,  40.  The  variation  in  the  locative 
expressions,  from  hortis  to  ad  salinas  is  Vitruvian :  see  e.g. 
the  considerable  variety  in  30,  7-22  ;  also  in  gymnasia  .  .  . 
foro  (174,  10);  ad  villas  .  .  .  in  urbe  (148,  9-1 1);  in  mon- 
tibus  aut  ad  ipsos  monies  (188,  18).  Next,  Ussing's  fourth 
example  under  this  head,  ut  ad  solvendiim  non  esset,  pre- 
sents the  unique  ad  solvendum  instead  of  the  common 
dative  solvendo  (found  for  instance  in  Cic.  Phil.  2,  4 ;  Off. 

1  Cf.  also  Livy's  circa  Romanas  salinas  7,  19,  8  ;  also  ad  g allinas,  Plin. 
N.  H.  15,  137;  Suet.  Galba  I. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VTTRUVIUS  1 87 

2,  79;  Att.  13,  10,  3;  Fam.  3,  8,  2;  and  in  the  jurists). 
What  should  be  inferred  from  this  ?  That  our  Vitruvius 
is  a  late  writer  ?  Not  at  all,  for  no  late  writer  is  cited  as 
using  ad  solvendum.  It  is  a  peculiarity  in  Vitruvius  and 
nothing  more.  Of  the  same  sort  is  that  peculiarity  in 
Cicero's  letters  when  he  uses  twice  esse  ad  scribendum  (A if. 
!»  J9»  95  Fam.  12,  29,  2)  instead  of  the  common  scribendo 
adesse  (for  which  see  the  Thesaurus,  s.  v.  assum,  918, 
43  ff.,  and  Cicero  himself  in  the  second  passage  just 
cited).  And  a  glance  at  the  context  of  Vitruvius  shows 
why  he  used  the  peculiar  ad  solvendum.  It  runs  thus : 
Sic  Paeonius  ducendo  et  reducendo  pecuniam  contrivit  ut 
ad  solvendum  non  esset.  Obviously  the  usual  dative  sol- 
vendo  was  avoided  for  fear  of  obscurity  on  account  of 
ducendo  and  reducendo.  Finally,  with  Praun's  general 
observation  cited  by  Ussing,  we  need  not  trouble  ourselves 
here,  for  of  course  Praun  never  meant  it  to  be  taken  as 
evidence  of  the  late  authorship  of  Vitruvius. 

'Zte  instead  of  the  simple  ablative  in  I,  16  :  parenti  tuo 
de  eo  fueram  notus.  Likewise  e  in  3,  22  :  circini  usum,  e 
quo  maxime  facilius  aedificiorum  expediunturdescriptiones* 
—  But  causal  de  is  in  itself  no  proof  of  recent  authorship, 
and  the  use  of  it  as  denoting  '  den  Erkenntnisgrund  '  is  one 
of  Drager's  categories  (i,  p.  630)  illustrated  by  him  with 
examples  from  Plautus  and  Cicero,  to  which  may  be  added 
Auct.  Herenn.  4,  44,  res  tota  parva  de  parte  cognoscitur. 
Furthermore,  in  the  passage  cited  from  Vitruvius,  the 
simple  eo  could  hardly  have  been  written  without  danger 
of  obscurity  on  account  of  parenti  tuo.  The  use  of  e  with 
the  ablative  instead  of  a  simple  instrumental,  may  seem 
lumbering  and  awkward  in  3,  22 ;  but  that  it  was  not 


1 88  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

unknown  to  the  classical  period  is  obvious  from  its  appear- 
ance in  Cicero,  Rep.  2,  58 :  exaere  alieno  commota  civitas, 
as  well  as  several  times  in  Bell.  Afr.  as  cited  by  Kohler, 
Act.  Erlang.  i,  p.  439.  See  also  Pomp.  Mela,  2,  21. 

Passing  next  to  conjunctions,  Ussing  says :  '  With  regard 
to  conjunctions,  Drager  (ii,  p.  153)  has  already  pointed 
out  that  aut  and  sive  are  used  quite  indiscriminately  by 
Vitruvius.  A  critic  in  the  Athenaeum,  Jan.  i,  1898,  says: 
"the  misuse  of  aut  or  sive  is  no  great  matter."  I  had  not 
expected  this  declaration  from  "  a  skilled  reader."  Most 
Latin  scholars  would  have  the  contrary  view.'  —  But  the 
remark  of  the  critic  in  the  Athenaeum  must  not  be  judged 
apart  from  its  context.  He  does  not  mean  that  the  con- 
fusion of  aut  and  sive  is  no  great  matter  as  a  point  of 
style,  or  that  it  would  be  found  in  a  polished  writer.  His 
whole  contention  is  that  one  should  expect  to  find  such  errors 
in  unpolished  writers,  and  that  consequently  this  error  can- 
not be  used  in  settling  the  date  of  Vitruvius.  And  this  con- 
tention is  borne  out  by  the  facts  found  in  the  Thesaurus  in 
the  treatment  of  the  use  of  aut.  Drager,  also,  in  the  pas- 
sage cited  by  Ussing,  shows  how  the  Elder  Pliny  employs 
aut  and  sive  as  synonyms,  so  that  this  confusion  cannot  be 
held  to  be  evidence  of  very  recent  authorship.  And  for  the 
Vitruvian  employment  of  aut  .  .  .  sive  or  sive  .  .  .  aut  in 
the  same  sentence,  parallels  are  quoted  from  the  Aetna,  from 
Manilius  and  from  Celsus  in  the  Thesaurus  (s.  v.  aut,  p.  1 571, 
1 1  ff .,  and  78 ;  cf .  the  somewhat  similar  seu . . .  aut  in  Plautus, 
Ps.  543,  cited  on  p.  1570,  56),  with  the  following  general 
remark  on  such  combinations  in  prose  writers,  p.  1571,  55  : 
'  increbrescunt  apud  eos  qui  poetarum  sermonem  etiam 
alias  imitantur  et  apud  minus  cultos  (Vitr.  Cels.).' 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  189 

Ussing  proceeds :  '  Equally  unclassical  is  the  use  of 
negatives  in  sentences  consisting  of  two  alternatives. 
The  word  neve  does  not  occur  in  Vitruvius.  He  always 
puts  ne  .  .  .  neque  instead  of  ne  .  .  .  neve,  as  5,  16:  ne  sit 
cupidus  neque  in  muneribus  accipiendis  habeat  animum 
occupatum.  As  for  negations,  it  is  also  to  be  observed 
that  he  likes  to  place  them  foremost  in  the  sentence.  He 
says  non putavi praetermittendum  (i,  14)  instead  of  putavi 
non  praetermittendum;  non  puto  dubium  esse  (124,  i),  etc. 
This  is  done  occasionally  in  other  authors,  but  in  Vitruvius 
very  frequently.  A  striking  example  is  48,  22  :  non  enim 
quae  stint  e  molli  caemento  subtili  facie  venustatis,  non  eae 
possunt  esse  in  vetustate  non  ruinosae! —  With  regard  to 
Ussing's  first  point,  it  is  sufficient  to  quote  Schmalz,  Lat. 
Gram.?  p.  358:  '  Selten  ist  die  Ankniipfung  mit  nee  statt 
mit  neve ;  bei  Cicero  wird  nee  nach  ne  nie  angetroffen 
(vgl.  C.  F.  W.  Muller  zu  Cic.  Off.  i,  91),  auch  nicht  bei 
Caesar  und  Sail,  aber  bei  Nepos,  bei  Vitruv.,  und  Sen. 
Phil.,  welche  neve  gar  nicht  kennen,  bei  Liv.,  Flor.,  nach 
Liv.  vereinzelt,  haufig  bei  Dichtern,  so  schon  bei  Plaut, 
bei  Verg.,  Hor.,  Ov.  u.  a.'  It  is  obvious  that  we  have  here 
what  may  be  called  a  distinct  division  on  a  point  of  style. 
Though  the  Ciceronian  must  be  taken  to  be  the  better,  yet 
we  see  that  late  authorship  cannot  be  proved  from  the 
other  usage.  On  the  second  point,  the  setting  of  nega- 
tives foremost  in  the  sentence,  no  evidence  is  presented 
that  this  was  a  habit  of  late  authors.  In  phrases  like  non 
putavi  praetermittendum,  Praun,  who  cites  (p.  27)  eleven 
occurrences  of  it  in  Vitruvius,  holds  that  the  attaching  of 
the  negative  to  ptito  is  the  Greek  idiomatic  use  as  in  ov 
077/u.  He  might  have  compared  OVK  oto/tot,  ov  i/o/i/£o>, 


190  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

etc. ;  see  Ktihner-Gerth,  Gr.  Gramm.  ii,  p.  180.  And 
W.  Schmidt  in  Jahresbericht  Altertumsw.,  1901,  cviii,p. 
119,  draws  attention  to  Caesar,  B.  G.  2,  31,  2  :  qui  ad  hunc 
modum  locuti :  non  se  existimare  Romanes  sine  ope  divina 
bellum  gerere.  But  I  think  it  probable  that  this  position  of 
non  was,  in  the  less  polished  speech,  commoner  than  is 
usually  supposed,  for  it  appears  not  only  in  the  Bellum 
Africum  59,  i:  Non  arbitror  esse  praetermittendum  quem- 
admodum,  etc.,  and  84,  i  :  Non  videtur  esse  praetermit- 
tendiim  de,  etc.,  but  also  there  is  a  similar  use  in  the 
eighth  book  of  the  Gallic  War,  by  Hirtius,  48,  10:  quod 
ego  non  existimavi  mihi  esse  faciendum,  propterea  quod,  etc. 
Finally,  in  Ussing's  last  example  we  have  in  non  enim 
quae  .  .  .  non  eae  possunt  nothing  but  the  rhetorical  figure 
of  anadiplosis,  found  (to  compare  great  things  with  small) 
in  Demosthenes  9,  31  :  a\A,'  ov%  virep  3>i\t7nrov  /cat  &v 
eiceivos  Tr/aarret  vvv,  oi>x  ofrno?  e%ovcrn/.  And  the  recurrence 
of  non  once  again  in  non  ruinosae  may  be  compared  with 
Cic.  Fam.  13,  18,  2  :  non  potest  mihi  non  summe  esse  iucun- 
dum  (see  also  Drager  i,  p.  135).  Neither  of  these  usages 
is  any  proof  of  late  authorship. 

Taking  up  a  new  topic,  Ussing  says :  '  It  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  in  the  Silver  age  the  conjunction  num  is  gradu- 
ally replaced  by  an,  and  later  on  disappears  entirely  from 
the  language.  In  Vitruvius  num  does  not  exist  at  all, 
neither  do  we  find  (the  single)  an,  ne,  nor  nonne.  The 
only  particle  by  which  he  introduces  a  dependent  inter- 
rogative clause  is  si,  e.g.  53,  14:  si  est  firma  probatur ;  cf. 
32,  4;  quaesiit  si  essent  agri ;  133,  20:  quaerebant  si  honeste 
essent  educati ;  156,  20:  quaesiit  si  quern  novissent ;  183, 
10:  de  aqua  .  .  .  quibusque  rebus  si  erit  salubris  et  idonea 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  19 1 

prvbetur  expUcabo.  Only  in  double  clauses  we  find  utrum 
.  .  .  an,  as  18,  26  :  dubit antes  utrnm  morbo  an  pabuli  vitio 
laesa  essent.  But  si  occurs  equally,  cf.  53,  12  :  de  ipsa  au- 
tem  testa,  si  sit  optima  sen  vitiosa  ad  structuram,  statim 
nemo  potest  iudicare  ;  173,  17:  neque  animadvertunt  si  quid 
eorum  fieri  potest  necne.  Si  in  this  sense  already  occurs 
in  Plautus ;  so  we  do  not  wonder  that  it  is  found  in  Vitru- 
vius,  but  we  wonder  that  it  is  the  only  interrogative  con- 
junction he  knows,  as  it  is  the  only  one  which  has  migrated 
into  the  Romance  languages.  Whether  this  si  is  due  origi- 
nally to  an  influence  from  the  Greek  language,  I  dare  not 
decide.'  —  The  examples  for  this  paragraph  are  taken  by 
Ussing  from  Praun  (p.  74  f.),  but  the  inferences  drawn 
from  them  by  these  two  scholars  are  different.  Ussing 
holds  that  the  almost  exclusive  use  of  si  in  indirect  questions 
instead  of  other  particles  is  evidence  of  late  authorship; 
Praun,  that  such  was  '  die  Richtung  der  Volksprache '  in 
the  classical  period.  This  phenomenon  of  the  almost  ex- 
clusive use  of  si  with  which  Ussing  concludes  his  para- 
graph is  really  the  only  point  in  it  that  has  any  force,  for 
the  preceding  details  are  unimportant  Thus,  there  is  noth- 
ing surprising  in  the  absence  of  num  from  Vitruvius,  since 
it  is  not  found  in  Catullus,  Tibullus,  or  Pliny  the  Elder 
(Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.,s  p.  360).  On  the  other  hand,  num 
does  not  '  entirely  disappear '  from  late  authors,  for  it  is 
found  in  an  indirect  question  in  Orosius  I,  19,  9.  Boethius 
has  numne  (Herm.  Sec.  p.  46,  line  12,  Meiser),  and  Arnobius 
has  numquid  46  times  (Schmalz,  ibid.\  The  word  nonne 
in  indirect  questions  is  exclusively  Ciceronian  (Schmalz, 
p.  361).  As  for  -ne,  Caesar  and  Sallust  have  it  only  half 
a  dozen  times  each,  whereas  Tacitus  has  it  nearly  thirty 


IQ2  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

times,  so  that  nothing  about  the  date  can  be  argued  from 
its  absence  from  Vitruvius.  We  should  not  be  surprised 
at  missing  an  in  Vitruvius  in  the  simple  indirect  question 
with  quaere  or  other  verbs  meaning  '  ask,'  because  it  is  not 
commonly  found  in  the  ante-classical  or  classical  period 
except  in  connection  with  sc io  and  verbs  of  doubting  (  The- 
saurus, s.  v.  an,  p.  7  ff.).  What  then  is  left  of  Ussing's 
observation  ?  Nothing  but  eight  examples  in  which  si  is 
said  to  be  used  in  indirect  questions  in  Vitruvius  (seven 
quoted  by  Ussing,  to  which  add  162,  17:  quaeratur  solum 
si  sit perpetuo  solidum}.  But  a  closer  examination  of  these 
examples  will  show  that  half  of  them  may  be  eliminated  at 
once.  I  mean  the  two  with  probari  and  those  with  ani- 
madvertere  and  iudicare.  In  all  of  these  except  one  (53, 
12)  we  have  the  indicative  in  the  clause  with  si,  and  none 
are  indirect  questions  but  all  are  conditional  protases  used 
instead  of  indirect  questions  (see  Praun,  pp.  70  and  72  on 
the  two  examples  with  probari').  This  leaves  only  the 
four  cases  with  quaero,  which  certainly  cannot  be  called 
into  evidence  for  late  authorship,  since  quaero  si  is  found 
in  the  Augustan  period,  for  instance  in  Propertius  (2,  3,  5) 
and  Livy  (29,  25,8;  39,  50,  7).  The  only  truthful  observa- 
tion, therefore,  which  can  be  made  about  Vitruvius' s  habits 
in  expressing  indirect  questions  is  that  he  seldom  employs 
the  '  sentence-question  ' :  and  only  in  the  phrase  quaero  si. 
Ussing  next  passes  to  Hellenisms:  'The  most  ancient 
Roman  authors  not  unfrequently  borrowed  words  from 
Greek  to  express  ideas  or  to  name  objects  for  which  their 
own  language  lacked  words,  but  they  did  not  borrow  forms 
or  constructions.  The  age  of  Cicero  and  Augustus  tried 
1  For  other  kinds  of  indirect  questions  in  him,  see  Praun,  p.  75  f. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  193 

to  remove  the  Greek  words  and  to  keep  the  language  pure, 
but  these  attempts  did  not  entirely  succeed,  and  in  the 
Silver  age  we  find  repeatedly  that  where  it  became  neces- 
sary to  use  Greek  words,  the  authors  liked  to  show  their 
knowledge  in  retaining  the  Greek  flexions,  as  os  in  the 
nominative  instead  of  us,  u  in  the  genitive,  etc.  In  the 
course  of  time  such  Hellenisms  increased,  and  the  great 
number  of  them  which  occur  in  Vitruvius  also  help  to 
indicate  the  period  when  he  lived.'  —  Here  the  confession 
of  Ussing,  that  the  attempts  of  Cicero  and  Augustus  to 
remove  Greek  words  and  to  keep  the  language  pure  '  did 
not  entirely  succeed '  is  fatal  to  his  argument.  We  must 
remember  that  we  are  dealing  with  an  author  who  stands 
alone  in  his  kind.  It  is  true  that  Ennius,  Plautus,  and 
Terence,  when  they  used  Greek  words,  generally  Latinized 
them  in  form,  but  we  know  that  Accius  preferred  to  retain 
the  Greek  terminations  (Varro,  L.  L.  5,  21;  cf.  10,  70), 
and  we  see  that  Lucilius,  Catullus,  and  Varro  as  well  as 
the  Augustan  poets  employed  many  Greek  forms,  while 
the  number  of  Greek  words  in  Bell.  Afr.,  Bell.  Hisp.,  Cel- 
sus,  Pliny  the  Elder,  and  Petronius  shows  that  we  have 
not  to  wait  until  late  Latinity  for  the  appearance  of  this 
tendency.  I  need  say  nothing  of  Cicero's  letters,  which 
in  spite  of  his  own  dictum  in  the  Tusculans  (i,  15),  sets 
me  Graece  loqui  in  Latino  sermone  non  plus  solere  quam  in 
Graeco  Latine,  prove  that  '  Greek  words  and  phrases  were 
the  argot  of  literary  Rome.'1  If  Cicero  uses  Greek  as 
'part  of  the  terminology  of  rhetoric  and  politics,  not 
merely  calling  it  in  to  supply  a  deficiency  in  the  Latin 
language  but  dropping  into  it  when  he  might  as  easily 

1  Tyrrell,  Correspondence  of  Cicero,  I,  p.  66. 


194  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

have  used  Latin,'  we  ought  not  to  be  surprised  at  finding 
Vitruvius  doing  the  same  in  treating  a  subject  on  which 
not  many  Romans  had  written  before  him.  When  we 
find  Greek  terminations  in  Vitruvius,  we  must  remember 
that  Cicero  wrote  tyrannida  in  Att.  14,  14,  2,  though  tyran- 
nidem  in  Off.  3,  90,  and  that  this  Greek  ending  is  not  con- 
fined to  letters  to  Atticus,  but  is  found  in  hebdomada  in 
Fam.  1 6,  9,  3.  And  in  Or.  191  we  have  paeana,  though 
paeanem  stands  in  D.  0.  I,  251.  Neither  should  it  be 
thought  that  Vitruvius  uses  only  Greek  terminations  for 
Greek  words.  For  example :  Nohl's  Index  to  Vitruvius 
gives  under  the  letters  a,  bt  and  c,  973  words  (excluding 
proper  nouns  and  adjectives,  and  Greek  words  quoted  as 
such,  like  id  afiarov  vocitari  iusserunf).  Of  these  973 
words,  101  are  adopted  from  Greek,  including  of  course 
forms  of  such  words  as  athleta,  barbarus,  basilica,  camera, 
centaurus,  chorda,  which  were  fully  naturalized  in  the  Latin 
of  the  classical  period.  Now  of  these  101  words  it  appears 
that  71  are  used  by  Vitruvius  with  Latin  terminations.  Of 
the  remaining  thirty,  eighteen  are  technical  terms  belong- 
ing to  the  vocabulary  of  architecture,  and  hence  naturally 
Greek,  such  as  amphithalamos  (nom.),  baseos  (gen.),  cathe- 
toe  (nom.).  This  leaves  of  the  101  words,  only  twelve 
untechnical  terms  in  which  Vitruvius  employs  Greek  ter- 
minations. They  are :  acroasin  (Cicero  and  Varro  have 
acroasi\  aethera  (Cic.),  agrammatos,  amusos,  aniatrolo- 
getos,  arctoe  (Cic.),  arithmeticen,  arteriace  (Plin.,  Cels.), 
asty,  abl.  (Ter.  and  Nepos  have  astit),  catacecaumeniten 
(Plin.  has  catacecaumenitae},  colossicotera,  cratera,  ace. 
(Virg.,  Ov.).  Therefore,  of  the  101  words  only  seven  are 
found  in  Vitruvius  with  Greek  terminations  which  are  not 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  195 

similarly  found  in  other  authors,  the  latest  of  whom  is 
Pliny,  and  these  seven  are  all  unusual  words,  all  but  one 
in  fact  (acroasis)  making  their  appearance  in  Latin  for  the 
first  time  in  Vitruvius.  This  examination,  therefore,  in- 
complete as  it  is,  may  probably  serve  to  show  that  Hel- 
lenisms in  terminations  are  no  more  common  in  Vitruvius 
than  in  writers  of  the  classical  period. 

'  He  uses  Greek  words  not  only  when  he  may  possibly 
quote  from  a  Greek  source,  but  also  in  his  own  argumen- 
tations, and  connected  with  Greek  flexions,  as  132,  27: 
philologis  et philotechnis  rebus;  247,  19:  collossicotera ;  8, 
14 :  aniatrologetos.  He  does  not  even  seem  afraid  of  -ois 
instead  of  -is,  as  pentadorois,  39,  7.'  —  In  the  first  of  these 
examples  we  have  a  word  not  found  elsewhere,  philotechnis. 
It  is  not  difficult  of  interpretation  and  seems  a  natural 
term  to  connect  with  philologis.  To  Vitruvius  philologia 
means  '  literature '  or  '  literary  studies '  in  a  wide  sense 
(156,  7;  157,  20;  203,  14);  so  it  did  to  Cicero  (Att.  2,  17,  i). 
And  just  as  to  Cicero  there  was  within  philologia  such  a 
thing  as  re'xyoko^ia  (Att.  4,  16,  3  :  reliqui  libri  Te%vo\o<yiav 
habent,  here  used  of  the  technical  discussion  of  statecraft 
in  the  latter  portion  of  the  De  Republica),  so  to  Vitruvius 
philotechnicae  res  are  the  artistic  (particularly  in  his  case 
the  architectural)  parts  of  literary  pursuits.  Thus  also  we 
find  <j>i\6T€%voi  (lovers  of  art}  and  <£A,o0-o<£ot  distinguished 
in  Plato,  Rep.  476  A.  The  ideas,  therefore,  which  Vitru- 
vius expresses  in  this  passage  were  not  foreign  to  the 
classical  period,  and  the  word  philotechnis,  not  occurring 
elsewhere,  cannot  be  taken  as  evidence  of  late  authorship. 
Neither  can  colossicotera.  I  am  not  aware  that  the  positive 
of  this  adjective  is  found  elsewhere,  either  in  Greek  or 


196  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

Latin,  in  any  other  than  its  literal  sense  as  applied  to  a 
'  colossal '  statue.  Vitruvius  has  it  thus  in  50,  3  :  statuam 
colossicam,  and  251,  3  :  colossici  Apollinis.  Yet  in  the  more 
general  and  derived  sense  Vitruvius  (and  no  late  author) 
has  it  twice  in  the  comparative  degree,  —  in  the  passage 
cited  above  (247,  19)  where  it  is  used  of  weights  too  enor- 
mous to  be  raised  by  the  sucula:  sin  autem  colossicotera 
amplitudinibus  et  ponderibus  onera  in  operibus  fuerint,  non 
erit  suculae  committendum ;  and  in  81,  I,  where  it  is 
applied  to  buildings  which  are,  as  we  might  say,  some- 
what gigantic :  opera  .  .  .  ipsa  colossicotera.  Here  again 
we  must  remember  what  has  been  said  of  Greek  as  the 
literary  argot  of  the  classical  period.  Cicero  in  his  letters 
does  not  shrink  from  introducing  Greek  comparatives  into 
Latin  sentences ;  e.g.  Att.  12,  45,  2  :  nam  ceteroqui  ave/cro- 
repa  erant  Asturae ;  Att.  4,  2,  7 :  cetera  quae  me  sollicitant 
fj.v<TTiK(t>T€pa  sunt.  Other  such  comparatives  are  7roXm«:a>- 
repa  (Att.  14,  14,  l),  $i\o\oy(i)Tepa  (Att.  13,  12,  3),  etcreve- 
a-repov  and  faXocrTopiyorepov  (Att.  13,  9,  i).  Caesar  also 
used  them,  as  we  see  from  Cic.  Q.  F.  2,  15  (16),  5  :  reliqua 
ad  quendam  locum  paOv/j-orepa :  hoc  enim  utitur  (sc.  Cae- 
sar] verbo.  The  word  aniatrologetos  (8,  14)  is  also  a  a7ra£ 
(cf.  larpo\o<yea)  and  larpoXoyta).  It  is  worth  observing 
that  the  whole  passage  is  full  of  Greek  names  and  words : 
architectus,  grammaticns,  Aristarchus,  agrammatos,  musi- 
cus,  Aristoxenus,  amusos,  Ape  lies,  graphidos,  plastes,  My- 
ron, Polyclitus,  plasticae,  Hippocrates  —  all  these  occur  in 
the  same  section.  And  we  may  note  that  in  our  word 
the  ending  -os  is  due  to  an  emendation  by  Giocondo,  the 
manuscripts  giving  -us.  Finally,  of  the  ending  -ois  as 
found  in  pentadorois,  there  is  no  manuscript  evidence  that 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  197 

Vitruvius  used  it,  but  if  he  did,  he  was  perfectly  excusable 
since  the  whole  passage  bristles  with  Greek,  and  Pliny, 
N.  H.  35,  171,  shows  that,  if  he  was  not  drawing  from 
Vitruvius,  he  had  the  same  Greek  source  before  him. 
Vitruvius  is  describing  the  kinds  of  bricks  used  by  the 
Greeks  in  their  buildings :  ex  his  unum  TrevraBwpov,  alte- 
rum  rerpaScopov  dicitur.  Bwpov  autem  Graeci  appellant 
palmum  quod  .  .  .  falmam.  Ita  quod  est  quoquoversus 
quinque  palmorum  pentadoron,  quod  est  quattuor  tetradoron 
dicitur,  et  quae  sunt publica  opera  7rez/Ta8&>/9(H9,  quae  privata 
T€TpaScopois  struuntur.  I  print  the  passage  as  Rose  gives 
it.  The  manuscripts  have  only  Latin  letters.1  For  TTCV- 
Ta&»/J0i5  and  rerpaSmpois  they  give  pentadoros  HS,  penta- 
toros  G ;  tetradoros  GS,  tetradoro  H.  If  Vitruvius  himself 
used  Latin  letters  here,  it  is  obvious  that  he  may  have 
written  pentadoris  and  tetradoris  with  Latin  terminations, 
so  that  in  either  case  nothing  is  left  of  Ussing's  argument, 
since  even  Cicero  does  not  hesitate  to  treat  a  Greek  dative 
like  a  Latin  ablative  (cf.  Att.  5,  21,  14 :  de  evSofjLv%(p  probo 
idem  quod  tu). 

'A  characteristic  Hellenism  is  the  use  of  the  genitive 
corresponding  to  the  comparative  than,  as  105,  23 :  supe- 
riora  inferiorum  fieri  contractiora ;  22,  2  :  ut  ne  longius  sit 
alia  ab  alia  sagittae  missionis.  This  Grecism  is  found  in 
Apuleius,  as  in  Met.  3,  1 1  :  statuas  et  imagines  dignioribus 
meique  maioribus  reservare  suadeo ;2  De  Dogm,  Plat.  1,9: 

1  This  is  also  frequently  the  case  in  cod.  M  of  Cicero's  letters  to  Atticus, 
where  our  editions  give  Greek  letters;   see  Tyrrell  and  Purser  to  Att.  2,  20,  I 
and  14,  3,  2. 

2  The  reading  here  of  met  depends  upon  the  '  manus  recentissima  '  of  cod. 
F  (Vliet,  p.  xiii).    The  manuscripts  themselves  have  meis,  and  Vliet  reads 
meritis. 


198  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

animam  .  .  .  omnium  gignentium  esse  seniorem.  In  Ter- 
tullian,  Apol.  40 :  maiorem  Asiae  et  Africae  terram ;  in  the 
Latin  translations  of  Irenaeus  and  Hermes  Pastor;  very 
frequently  in  the  oldest  Latin  translation  of  the  Bible 
(Itala),  as  I  Maccab.  6,  27 :  maiora  horum  facient.  The 
Vulgate  here  has  the  regular  construction :  maiora  quam 
haec,  and  mostly  so,  but  occasionally  the  genitive  has  been 
retained ;  comp.  Wolfflin,  Archiv,  vii,  p.  1 17  ff.  The  above- 
mentioned  reviewer  in  the  Athenaeum  says  that  this  "  slip- 
shod Greek  genitive  is  not  avoided  by  Plautus  and  Ennius." 
I  should  have  been  much  obliged  to  him  for  indicating  the 
places.  I  thought  I  knew  my  Plautus  pretty  well,  but  I 
have  never  found  it.'  —  Here  we  should  have  the  strongest 
evidence  of  late  authorship  which  we  have  thus  far  reached 
if  we  could  really  feel  sure  that  Vitruvius  used  the  Greek 
construction  of  the  genitive  of  comparison.  That  he  did 
so,  seems  to  have  been  doubted  by  no  recent  writer  on  the 
subject  of  this  genitive,  and  it  is  defended  either  on  the 
ground  that  he  was  following  Greek  sources  (Wolfflin, 
Archiv,  vii,  118;  Sittl,  die  lokalen  Verschiedenheiten,  p. 
1 14),  or  by  pointing  to  traces  of  this  use  in  even  earlier 
writers.  These  traces  were  of  course  what  the  reviewer  in 
the  Athenaeum  had  in  mind,  and  that  he  is  somewhat 
unjustly  treated  by  Ussing  will  be  granted  by  anybody 
who  will  take  the  trouble  to  read  Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.? 
p.  253,  n.  i.  Even  Wolfflin,  in  the  very  article  cited  by 
Ussing,  points  to  these  traces  in  Plautus.  But  in  Vitru- 
vius it  must  be  confessed  that  we  have  no  longer  'traces,' 
and  that,  if  we  take  the  passages  as  they  are  usually 
taken,  without  further  investigation,  the  real  Greek  geni- 
tive of  comparison  is  found  in  him  for  the  first  time  in 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  199 

Latin.1  Is  it,  however,  certain  that  the  two  passages  cited 
by  Ussing  2  are  properly  taken  ?  The  first  of  them  must  be 
seen  in  full  before  it  can  be  studied.  It  runs  thus :  Ergo 
si  natura  nascentium  ita  postulat,  recte  est  constitutum  et 
altitudinibus  et  crassitudinibus  superiora  inferiorum  fieri 
contractiora.  Now  in  an  earlier  sentence  Vitruvius  had 
written  uti  firmiora  sint  inferiora  superioribus  (75,  16). 
Here  is  the  usual  ablative  of  comparison.  Why  does  he 
not  employ  it  in  our  passage  ?  He  purposely  avoids  it, 
I  think,  because  after  altitudinibus  and  crassitudinibus 
another  ablative,  inferioribus,  would  be  awkward  and  per- 
haps obscure.  So  in  Sail.  H.  2,  37 :  vir  gravis  et  nulla 
arte  cuiquam  inferior,  another  ablative  instead  of  the  dative 
is  inconceivable.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  in  Vitruvius 
inferiorum  is  a  genitive  of  comparison.  Every  careful 
reader  must  already  have  seen  that  we  are  dealing  with  a 
brachylogy,  and  that  altitudinibus  et  crassitudinibus  are  to 
be  taken  a  second  time  so  that  inferiorum  does  not  depend 
upon  contractiora.  In  first  drawing  attention  to  this  ex- 
ample, Praun  did  not  cite  it  completely,  but  omitted  the 
two  ablatives,  and  in  this  mangled  condition  it  has  since 
been  quoted  as  a  case  of  the  genitive  of  comparison  — 
which  it  is  not.  There  remains  then  only  one  case  to  be 
considered  (22,  2),  and  here  I  do  not  believe  that  Vitruvius 

1 1  cannot  accept  Varro,  R.  R.  2,  5,  10,  cited  by  Schmalz,  as  a  certain 
case.  See  Keil's  note  on  it. 

2  A  third,  cited  by  Praun  (p.  79)  and  Wolfflin  (Archiv.  vii,  118),  is  not  a 
genitive  of  comparison  as  has  already  been  noted  by  Nohl  (  Wochenschrift  f. 
kl.  Phil,  iii,  p.  563).  It  is  231,  I :  Ad  anguis  inferius  ventris  sub  caudam 
subiectus  est  cenfaurus,  which  means  '  Beneath  the  Snake's  belly,  under  its 
tail,  lies  the  Centaur  ';  cf.  Aratus  447;  oiJpr;  8£  jcp^oarcu  virtp  afrrov  /cecratfpoto. 
Here  ad  inferius  —  ad  inferior  em  par  tern  ventris ,'  for  the  use  of  ad,  see  the 
Thesaurus,  s.  v.  p.  519,  23  ;  525,  6-36. 


200  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

wrote  sagittae  missionis  but  rather  sagittae  missioned 
Errors  in  writing  the  genitive  in  -is  instead  of  the  ablative 
in  -e  or  -i  are  not  uncommon  in  the  manuscripts  of  Vitru- 
vius,  especially  where  another  genitive  precedes.  Thus  we 
find  rationis  (2,  23)  for  ratione,  where  sollertiae  precedes 
in  the  manuscripts.  We  have  also  solis  orbis  for  solis 
orbi  (224,  28) ;  decussis  for  decussi,  where  additis  precedes 
(67,  13).  And  we  also  find  the  plural  in  -es  for  the  abla- 
tive singular,  as:  necessitates  for  necessitate  (54,  14), partes 
for  parte  (94,  29),  frontis  for  fronte  (82,  12),  and  frontes 
for  fronts,  where  ornationis  precedes  (119,  17).  So  it 
appears  that  there  is  little  or  no  good  evidence  that  Vitru- 
vius  used  the  genitive  of  comparison  at  all. 

Ussing  next  observes  :  '  It  has  often  been  said  that 
Vitruvius  "  translated  largely  from  the  Greek."  I  am  not 
sure  that  he  has  translated  more  than  the  chapters  of 
Athenaeus  which  will  be  mentioned  below.2  He  seems 
more  likely  to  have  drawn  his  knowledge  from  Latin 
sources,  but  his  style  is  appreciably  influenced  by  Greek. 

1  As  it  was   printed  by   Schneider.     Perhaps,  as  the  codd.  have  sagitta 
emissionis,  we  should  keep  the  longer  word  as  in  283,  18:  sagittae  emissio- 
nem,  —  reading  it,  however,  in  the  ablative  with  the  earliest  printed  editions. 

2  Here  Ussing  is  referring  to  pages  29-41  of  his  article  where,  accepting 
the  view  of  Diels  that  this  Athenaeus  Mechanicus  was  a  post-classical  writer, 
he  argues  that  Vitruvius,  drawing  from  him,  must  be  even  later,  and  rejects 
Thiel's  theory  of  a  common  source  for  both  in  Agesistratus  (whom,  however, 
Rose2  has  indicated  for  Vitruvius,  275,  16).     How  unsuccessful  Ussing  is  in 
this  argument  has  been  shown  by  Schmidt  (JSurstan's  Jahresbericht,  1901, 
viii,  p.  120).     In  another  part  of  Ussing's  book  (p.  28)  there  is  a  very  just 
observation  which  he  would  have  done  well  to  bear  in  mind  throughout :  '  As 
if  it  were  possible  to  write  about  the  very  same  things  without  occasionally 
using  the  same  words ;   or  as  if  there  must  not  necessarily  be  found  a  simi- 
larity in  those  who  proceeded  from  the  same  school,  and  had  drawn  their 
knowledge  from  the   same   book.'     A  principle   of  common  sense   which 
'source-hunters'  often  ignore! 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  2OI 

Among  these  influences  we  will  mention  his  preference 
for  non  minus  (ovSev  rja-aov}  instead  of  item;  cf.  103,  24; 
187,  12;  218,  7,  etc.  Further,  the  superfluous  use  of 
etiam  (/cat')  in  comparisons,  as  216,  4  :  aequo  pondere  quo 
etiam  fuerat  corona.  Equally  the  striking  omission  of  the 
demonstrative  pronoun  before  the  relative,  as  30,  6 :  aedi- 
bus  sacris  quorum  deorum  maxime  in  tutela  civitas  videtur 
esse,  and  30,  1 1  :  Hercnli  in  quibus  civitatibus  non  sunt 
gymnasia;  and  the  still  more  striking  attraction  of  the 
relative  in  34,  27 :  spatio  relicto  quanta  arborum  longitu- 
dines  patiuntur?  —  This  paragraph  does  not  seem  quite 
apropos  of  the  argument,  for  it  merely  suggests  Greek 
sources  for  certain  usages  in  Vitruvius  without  indicating 
that  they  are  found  in  late  Latin.  I  am  not  aware  that 
non  minus  in  the  sense  of  item  is  so  found.  It  appears  to 
be  like  nee  minus  as  used  in  Varro,  R.  R.  I,  13,  3  ;  3,  I,  6  ; 
Propertius  i,  3,  5.1  The  'superfluous  etiam  («a/)'  calls 
for  no  further  comment  here;  and  for  the  substantive 
standing  in  the  relative  clause  without  a  demonstrative  in 
the  main  clause,  as  well  as  for  the  attraction  of  the  rela- 
tive, see  Schmalz's  Lat  Gramm.,3  pp.  372  and  373.  These 
usages  are  not  evidence  of  late  authorship. 

Neither  is  there  such  ev'dence  in  the  following  para- 
graph :  '  In  the  Syntax  of  Vitruvius,  one  of  the  things  that 
attract  our  attention  is  his  way  of  expressing  measures. 
He  often  uses  the  regular  construction  with  the  accusative, 
as  latitudine  maior  quampedes  xx  ;  but  he  equally  employs 

1  Non  minus  in  this  sense  is  found  more  than  thirty  times  in  Vitruvius ; 
besides  he  has  non  minus  etiam  nine  times  (cf.  nee  non  etiam,  Varro,  R.  R.  I, 
i,  6  ;  2,  10,  9 ;  3,  16,  26 ;  and  Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.,8  p.  351,  on  such 

pleonasms  in  uncultivated  style). 


202  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

the  genitive,  a  construction  which  also  appears  in  more 
ancient  authors,  as  Varro  ap.  Pliny,  N.  H.  36,  92  :  pyrami- 
des  .  .  .  imae  latae  pedum  quinum  septuagenumt  altae  cente- 
num  quinquagenum ;  Columella  2,  10,  26:  areas  latas 
pedum  denum,  longas  pedum  quinquagenum  facito ;  Plin. 
N.  H.  1 8,  140;  36,  7.  Thus  Vitruvius  77,  9:  uti  lata  et 
longa  sit  columnae  crassitudinis  unius  et  dimidiae ;  cf.  77, 
18;  ICX),  24;  94,  14;  205,  20;  207,  25,  etc.  But  instead 
of  this  genitivus  qualitatis,  Vitruvius  also  uses  the  abla- 
tive; cf.  39,  i:  longum  sesquipede,  latum  pede ;  94,  28: 
crassitudines  extenuentur  his  rationibus  uti  si  octava  parte 
erunt  quae  sunt  in  fronte,  hae  jiant  x  parte'  —  To  these 
examples  of  the  ablative  may  be  added J  1 70,  i  :  alte  cir- 
citer  pedibus  tribus ;  99,  24:  altae  dimidia  parte;  99,  26: 
altam  suae  crassitudinis  dimidia  parte.  But  they  cannot 
be  taken  as  evidence  of  very  late  authorship,  for  Columella 
has  this  ablative  in  5,  9,  3  :  digitis  quatuor  alte ;  Arb.  i,  6 : 
tribus  pedibus  alte ;  and  both  the  genitive  and  ablative  in 
3>  :3>  5  :  quidam  dupondio  et  dodrante  altum  sulcum,  latum 
pedum  quinque  faciunt. 

Coming  next  to  locative  constructions,  Ussing  says  :  '  A 
similar  wavering  is  found  in  the  local  determinations. 
Country  names  are  put  in  tha  ablative  without  preposi- 
tions, as  43,  27:  Achaia  Asia;  134,  14:  aliter  Aegypto, 
a  liter  Hispania,  non  eodem  mo  do  Ponto ;  182,  3:  Ponto  et 
Gallia;  176,  15  ff.,  frequently.  Even  the  genitive  appears, 

1  It  is  the  more  necessary  to  present  these  additional  cases  because  the  two 
which  Ussing  cites  are  not  very  convincing.  The  second  lacks  any  adjective 
like  longus,  latus,  or  altus,  and  is  therefore  an  ordinary  genitive  of  quality ; 
the  first  is  easily  emended  away,  as  pede  in  278,  7,  is  now  emended  to  pedem, 
and,  as  in  Plin.  35,  171,  longum  sesquipedem  is  now  read  instead  of  the  older 
reading  sesquipede  of  the  inferior  manuscripts. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS 


203 


59,  3  :  Cretae  et  Africae.  Names  of  towns  in  the  ablative 
instead  of  the  genitive,  49,  8:  Arretio ;  101,  22:  Sunio ; 
195,  19:  Zacyntho.  This  harmonizes  with  the  use  of  eo 
instead  of  ibi,  120,  16  :  eo  tragici  et  comici  actores  in  scaena 
peragunt ;  284,  II  :  arboribus  excisis  eoque  conlocatis.  (If 
the  same  is  found  in  Cicero's  Ep.  ad  Brutum  i,  2,  i,  it  may 
as  well  be  considered  as  a  testimony  against  the  genuine- 
ness of  these  epistles.)'  —  A  full  collection  of  Vitruvius's 
use  of  country  names  in  the  ablative  without  a  preposition 
has  been  published  by  Nohl  in  his  Analecta  Vitruviana, 
p.  9.  From  this  it  appears  that  twenty-one  names  are  thus 
used.1  This  is  a  large  number,  but  the  usage  itself  cannot 
be  accepted  as  proof  of  late  authorship  because  we  find  in 
Virgil  Ponto  (Eel.  8,  95  f.),  Latio  (A.  i,  265  ;  6,  67),  Lycia 
(A.  12,  344),  Italia  (A.  i,  263),  and  in  Pliny,  Hispania 
(N.  H.  8,  226),  and  Aegypto  (13,  56;  18,  123;  19,  79).2 
For  the  rest,  Vitruvius  uses  also  the  regular  construction 
of  in  with  the  ablative  in  the  case  of  twenty-five  country 
names,  some  being  the  same  as  those  which  he  has  used 
without  the  preposition.  When  Ussing  remarks,  'Even 
the  genitive  appears,'  he  must  mean  the  '  locative,'  for 
there  would  be  nothing  surprising  in  the  employment  of  a 
true  genitive  construction.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  true 
locative  of  any  country  name  is  found  in  Vitruvius,  since 
I  think  that  all  the  forms  which  seem  to  be  such  may  be 
explained  on  other  grounds,  just  as  the  apparent  locatives 
of  country  names  in  Pliny  have  been  explained  away.3 
Only  six  cases  call  for  consideration.  Of  these,  Astae(igo, 

1  For  Lucania,  however  (198,  9),  Lucanis  of  the  manuscripts  should  be 
retained;  see  below,  p.  221. 

2  Cf.  Funaioli,  Archiv,  xiii,  327  ff.  •  Funaioli,  Archiv,  xiii,  581  f. 


204  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

14)  and  Phrygiae  (196,  14)  are  chorographic  genitives 
(see  Schmalz,  Lat.  Gr.,s  234  f.),  such  as  are  found  in  Cae- 
sar, Livy,  and  Pliny.  In  195,  15,  Aethiopiae  is  now  read 
Aethiopia,  but,  if  the  manuscript  reading  is  kept,  we  have 
a  genitive  depending  on  lacus.  In  198,  8,  Boeotiae  (a  geni- 
tive) has  been  emended  to  Boeotia  on  account  of  the  fol- 
lowing ablatives.  In  the  example  cited  by  Ussing,  Cretae 
et  Africae  (59,  3),  one  of  two  explanations  may  be  given. 
Although  the  name  Cretae  is  generally  treated  like  that  of 
a  country  and  consequently  appears  in  Cicero  with  in  and 
the  ablative,  yet  as  an  island  it  is  used  in  the  locative  by 
Varro  (R.  R.  I,  7,  6)  and  Virgil  (A.  3,  162).  If  Vitruvius 
used  it  thus,  then  the  following  Africae  is  an  assimilation 
for  concinnity,  like  Sallust's  Romae  Numidiaeque  (J.  33,  4). 
But  both  Cretae  and  Africae  may  be  genitives  depending 
on  regionibus,  for  the  whole  sentence  reads :  nascuntur 
autem  eae  arbores  maxime  Cretae  et  Africae  et  nonmillis 
Syriae  regionibus.  There  remains  only  200,  24 :  sunt 
autem  etiam  fontes  uti  vino  mixti,  quemadmodum  est  unus 
Paphlagoniae,  ex  quo,  etc.  Here  Paphlagoniae  is  to  be 
taken  as  a  genitive.  But  even  if  locatives  of  country 
names  were  actually  found  in  Vitruvius,  we  could  parallel 
them  from  the  classical  period,  since  we  have  Peloponnesi 
in  Varro  (R.  R.  2,  6,  2),  Chersonesi  in  Nepos  (i,  2,  4),  and 
Galliae  in  Hirtius  (B.  G.8,  i,  2).1  As  for  names  of  towns 
in  the  ablative  instead  of  the  locative,  Nohl's  treatment 
(Analecta,  p.  10)  is  not  exact,  for  he  does  not  distinguish 
between  towns  and  islands.  The  names  of  towns  actually 
thus  used  by  Vitruvius  are  Arretio,  Chio  (283,  3,  where  the 

1  Here    I  think  that   Galliae  must  certainly  be  taken  as  a  locative  on 
account  of  rebus  gestis  Alexandriac  just  below.     Still,  see  Archiv,  xiii,  331. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VlTRUVIUS  205 

word  murum  shows  that  the  town  is  meant),  Halicarnasso, 
Lyncesto,  Paraetonio,  Sunio,  Tarso,  Teo,  Teano,  —  that  is, 
nine  in  all.1  It  is  true  that  this  misuse  becomes  common 
in  late  Latin  (Archiv,  xiii,  315  f.),  but  still  we  find  occur- 
rences of  it  early  enough  to  show  that  in  Vitruvius  the 
phenomenon  is  due  to  his  lack  of  finish,  and  that  it  cannot 
be  taken  as  evidence  of  late  authorship.  Thus,  Cato  has 
Venafro  (R.  R,  135,  i),  and  Varro  has  Amiterno  (L.  L.  6,  5). 
On  the  whole,  with  regard  to  these  three  categories  we 
must  treat  them  as  errors  of  style,  just  as  Pliny's  frequent 
use  of  in  with  the  ablative  of  a  town  name  (Archiv,  xiii, 
337)  is  treated.  Nobody  thinks  of  stigmatizing  the  Nat- 
ural History  as  a  piece  of  late  workmanship  because  of 
them,  particularly  in  view  of  the  practice  of  the  Emperor 
Augustus,  who  used  prepositions  with  names  of  towns  in 
order  to  avoid  obscurity  (Suet.  Aug.  86).  We  come  next 
to  Ussing's  remark  about  the  use  of  eo.  Here  it  is  not 
necessary  to  try  to  defend  Vitruvius  by  means  of  the  dis- 
puted passage  in  Cicero,  Ep.  ad  Brutum,  nor  even  to  refer 
to  the  undisputed  erroneous  use  of  eo  in  Celsus  8,  9,  I : 
ibi  pus  proximum  erit  eoque  tiri  debebit.  It  is  enough  to 
show  that  Vitruvius's  use  is  correct.  This  has  been  done 
for  1 20,  1 6,  by  Rose,  in  a  footnote  in  his  second  edition, 
where  he  refers  to  perago  used  twice  with  ad  and  the  accu- 
sative on  a  later  page.  In  284,  1 1,  eo  is  due  to  the  mean- 
ing of  conlocatis,  which  here  does  not  mean  simply  'to 
place,'  but  rather  '  to  bring  together ' ;  consequently  eo  is 
properly  used,  as  are  in  and  the  accusative  in  Plaut. 
Men.  986  :  in  tabernam  vasa  et  servos  conlocavi,  a  construc- 

1  For  the  passages,  see  Nohl.     On  the  other  hand,  Vitruvius  has  the  loca- 
tive of  stems  in  -o-  six  times,  and  always  in  stems  in  -a-. 


206  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

tion  found  also  in  Vitruvius  himself,  272,  9 :  in  eos  cuneoli 
ferrei  .  .  .  conlocantur.  Of  course  Vitruvius  has  also  the 
other  use  of  conloco,  with  in  and  the  ablative,  or  with  ibi  or 
ubi,  examples  of  which  may  readily  be  found  in  Nohl's 
Index.  With  these  two  uses  with  conloco  may  be  com- 
pared the  same  two  with  coaceruo  ;  for  instance,  Bell.  Afr. 
91,  2:  eo  coacervatis,  and  Cic.  R.  A.  133:  coacervari  una 
in  domo.  As  for  the  proper  meaning  of  eo  ('  thither,'  not 
'  there ')  Vitruvius  is  perfectly  aware  of  it,  and  so  employs 
it  in  seven  other  passages.1 

Passing  now  to  other  topics  Ussing  says  :  '  Noceri  is 
constructed  personally  in  the  passive  voice,  45,  22  :  neque 
ab  ignis  vehementia  nocentur ;  59,  7;  larix  ab  carte  aut 
tinea  non  nocetur.  Similarly  Apuleius,  de  Dogmate  Pla- 
tonis,  2,  17.'  —  These  two  examples  are  not  sufficent  evi- 
dence of  late  authorship,  for  Vitruvius  always  uses  this 
verb  properly  in  the  active  voice  (six  times  absolutely  and 
eight  times  with  the  dative  z  case),  and  also  has  it  once 
impersonally  in  the  passive  (59,  14).  The  two  examples 
are  rather  to  be  treated  among  those  violations  of  regular 
usage  which  crop  out  here  and  there  even  in  the  best 
writers.  It  is  true  that  I  know  of  no  similar  case  of  noceri 
before  Ulpian,  Dig.  43,  19,  3,  2  ;  for  Sen.  Ira,  3,  5,  4,  cited 
by  Neue  (FormnUekrt  iii,  5),  is  not  a  personal  use,  and 
Nepos,  7,  4,  2,  is  open  to  doubt.  But  for  examples  of 
other  verbs  which  take  the  dative  in  the  active  voice  and 
which  occur  occasionally  in  the  personal  use  in  the  passive, 

1  He  has  eo  loci  also  twice  correctly.     If  he  has  it  twice  besides  in  the 
sense  of  ibi  (233,  17 ;  235,  14),  so  have  Cicero  (Sest.  68)  and  Pliny  (N.  H. 
II,  136). 

2  If  the  work  were  late  we  might  expect  to  find  the  accusative  ;  see  Kiihner, 
Lat.  Gr.,  II,  p.  76,  $fin. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  2O? 

cf.  crederetur,  Cic.  R.  A.  103  and  credorused  thus  by  Ovid, 
Tr.  3,  10,  35,  and  M.  7,  98;  obstrepi,  Cic.  Marc.  9; 
antecelluntur,  Auct.  Herenn.  2,  48 ;  invideor,  Hor.  A.  P. 
56;  imperor,  Hor.  Ep.  i,  5,  21;  and  the  numerous  instances 
of  the  passive  participle  Qifersuadeo,  Wb'lfflin,  Rhein,  Mus. 
xxxvii,  115  f. 

'  Est  causa  cognoscere,  59,  17,  instead  of  cognoscendi  is  a 
construction  now  and  then  occurring  in  the  poets;  cf. 
Madvig,  Lat.  Gr.  §  419.  It  has  been  noticed  that  the 
genitive  of  the  gerund  is  very  rare  in  Vitruvius,  whereas 
the  ablative  is  exceedingly  frequent;  cf.  Praun,  p.  57  ff. 
It  is,  as  we  know,  the  ablative  form  which  passes  into  the 
Romance  languages  Italian  and  Spanish.'  —  There  is 
nothing  in  est  causa  cognoscere  that  points  to  late  author- 
ship, for  nothing  like  it  is  cited  in  any  other  author,  late 
or  early.  The  peculiarity  of  it  does  not  consist  hi  the  con- 
struction used  with  the  word  causa,  for  the  infinitive  with 
this  word  occurs  in  poets  (Verg.  A.  10,  90;  Tib.  3,  2,  30; 
Lucan  5,  464),  and  for  the  general  principle  involved  see 
Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.?  p.  293.  The  peculiarity  lies  in 
the  -meaning  of  the  word  causa,  for,  as  Praun  has  remarked 
(p.  20),  est  causa  here  is  equivalent  to  operae  pretium,  and 
no  parallel  for  this,  early  or  late,  is  cited.  It  must  there- 
fore be  considered  as  a  peculiarity  of  the  author.1  With 
regard  to  the  rest  of  Ussing's  paragraph,  two  observations 
should  be  made.  First,  that  the  rare  use  of  the  genitive 
of  the  gerund  in  Vitruvius  (only  five  occurrences,  Praun, 
p.  57  f.)  is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  never  uses  it  with 
an  adjective  or  with  causa  or  gratia  (Praun,  ibid.).  But 
with  adjectives  this  construction  is  very  rare  in  old  Latin, 

1  Rose  2  emends  to  tattsam. 


2O8  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

not  common  in  the  classical  writers,  and  of  slow  growth 
before  Tacitus,  who  greatly  developed  it  (Lane,  Lat. 
Gramm.  §  2258 ;  Schmalz,8  p.  304).  See  also  Praun's 
remarks  (p.  65)  on  the  use  of  the  gerund  or  gerundive 
construction  with  ad,  instead  of  in  the  genitive,  as  found 
in  writings  of  less  formal  and  polished  style.  Secondly, 
regarding  the  prevalence  of  the  ablative  construction  in 
Vitruvius,  this  is  the  commonest  of  all  the  gerund  and 
gerundive  constructions  at  all  periods.  Praun  (p.  59)  cites 
Valerius  Maximus  as  a  special  lover  of  it,  so  that  we  need 
not  come  down  to  late  Latin  to  find  it.  Even  the  modal 
use,  which  is  such  a  favorite  with  Vitruvius,  is  found,  once 
in  Cicero,  and  examples  occur  in  Caelius,  Sallust,  and  the 
Bellum  Hispaniense,  until  finally  Ovid  and  Livy  made  it 
common  (Schmalz,3  p.  305). 

Next  there  follows  in  Ussing  a  long  paragraph  which  I 
do  not  think  it  worth  while  to  reproduce  here.  It  deals 
with  the  undoubted  fact  that  in  Vitruvius  the  mood  em- 
ployed in  indirect  questions  is  very  apt  to  be  the  indica- 
tive.1 After  referring  to  this  usage  in  Plautus,  Ussing 
says  :  '  No  classical  prose  writer  would  indulge  in  putting 
the  indicative  in  a  dependent  clause  which  really  expresses 
a  reflection  or  a  doubt.'  He  does  not  say  that  late  writers 
do  so,  but  of  course  it  is  well  known  that  such  is  the  fact 
(for  instance,  see  the  literature  cited  in  Sittl,  Die  lokalen 
Verschiedenhciten,  p.  134),  and  his  argument  therefore  is 
that  this  phenomenon  in  Vitruvius  is  evidence  of  late  au- 
thorship. In  this  paragraph  Ussing  says  nothing  about 
the  appearance,  here  and  there,  of  this  indicative  in  several 

1  The  fullest  collections  are  to  be  found  in  Praun,  p.  71  ff.,  and  Richardson, 
Harvard  Stiidies  in  Cl.  Phil.,  1890,  i,  p.  157. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  209 

prose  writers  who  not  only  belong  to  the  '  classical  period ' 
but  who  are  also  so  strict  in  their  standards  of  style  that 
they  are  entitled  themselves  to  be  called  '  classics.'  That 
is,  Ussing  adopts  the  attitude  of  those  earlier  generations 
of  scholars  who,  from  the  time  of  Lambinus  down  to  near 
the  present  day,  did  not  scruple  to  emend  away  all  offenses 
against  the  strict  norm  of  classical  style.  Such  is  not  the 
attitude  of  most  scholars  now;  individualities  in  writers 
are  recognized,  and  departures  from  the  strict  norm  are 
often  welcomed,  rather  than  rejected,  as  indications  either 
that  the  literary  language  had  not  yet  attained  to  exact- 
ness in  following  rules  or  that  the  writer  in  question  is  em- 
ploying the  phraseology  of  colloquial  speech,  which  then, 
as  always,  was  less  careful  than  the  literary  style.  In  this 
spirit  we  ought  to  consider  the  appearance  of  the  indica- 
tive in  indirect  questions  in  Vitruvius.  The  best  general 
statement  with  regard  to  this  employment  of  the  mood  has 
been  made  by  Schmalz  (Lat.  Gramm.?  p.  359)-  The 
usage  crops  out  in  the  Auctor  ad  Herennium,  in  Varro,  in 
Cicero's  early  writings  and  his  letters,  and  in  letters  to  him. 
It  is  avoided  by  the  historians  though  not  by  the  poets  of 
the  Augustan  age,  and  it  is  found  in  Petronius  and  Pliny  the 
Elder.  The  closest  parallels  to  the  indicative  in  clauses 
expressing  '  a  reflection  or  a  doubt '  as  in  Vitruvius,  are  to  be 
found  in  the  seven  examples  cited  by  Marx  from  the  Auctol 
ad  Herennium  in  his  edition  of  that  book,  p.  176  f. 

In  Ussing's  next  paragraph  there  is  but  one  sentence 
that  calls  for  attention  :  '  It  is  certainly  unclassical  to  em- 
ploy the  subjunctive  in  an  indefinite  relative  clause,  as 
158,  5  :  quorum  utrum  ei  accident,  merenti  digna  constitit 
:  —  While  the  subjunctive  in  this  use  probably  does 


2IO  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

not  occur  in  the  classical  period,  yet  it  is  found  not  infre- 
quently in  the  Elder  Pliny  (Frobeen,  Quaestiones  Pli- 
nianae,  p.  33),  so  that,  if  it  were  found  in  Vitruvius,  the 
phenomenon  would  be  no  proof  of  late  authorship.  But 
in  fact,  I  do  not  believe  that  acciderit  is  a  subjunctive. 
The  truth  probably  is  that  constitit  comes  not  from 
consto  (as  Nohl  takes  it  in  his  Index),  but  from  consisto, 
the  perfect  of  which  is  not  infrequently  used  in  a  present 
sense.  For  this  use,  see  the  grammars  of  Kiihner  (ii, 
p.  95)  and  Lane  (§  1607),  and  for  numerous  examples, 
Munro's  note  to  Lucretius  i,  420,  where  he  cites  Cicero's 
letters,  the  two  Senecas,  Virgil,  Ovid,  and  Horace.  This 
present  meaning  of  constitit  makes  accident  allowable  as  a 
future  perfect.  Of  course,  however,  the  really  remarkable 
thing  in  the  sentence  is  the  employment  of  utrum  where 
there  is  a  choice  of  more  than  two  things  (see  the  context). 
For  this  use  I  know  of  no  parallel,  early  or  late. 

Ussing's  last  observation  is  as  follows.  'Finally  we 
shall  briefly  mention  the  position  of  the  words.  We  have 
already  noticed  the  inclination  to  put  the  negation  fore- 
most in  the  sentence.  Similarly  the  auxiliaries,  esse>  posse, 
and  velle,  etc.,  are  preferably  placed  before  the  infinitive 
to  which  they  belong,  as  10,  10:  ut  possint .  .  .  disciplinas 
penitus  habere  no  fas;  91,  5  :  qui  metopas  aequales  volunt 
facere.  In  sum,  the  governing  verb  is  very  often  put 
before  its  object,  whether  a  word  or  a  whole  sentence.'  — 
And  he  begins  his  summary,  which  immediately  follows, 
with  this  sentence :  '  These  features  and  many  others  point 
to  the  decadence  of  the  Latin  language  and  to  its  transi- 
tion to  the  Romance  tongues.'  —  As  for  this  argument,  I 
am  not  aware  that  sufficient  collections  have  ever  been 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  211 

made  regarding  the  position  of  the  auxiliary  verbs  to 
warrant  the  use  of  it  in  fixing  the  date  of  a  literary  work. 
This  was  the  reason  why  Sittl  published  nothing  on  the 
order  of  words  in  his  treatise  on  the  African  writers,  where 
he  says :  '  Die  Beobachtung  der  Wortstellung  ergibt  eben- 
falls  viel  interessantes,  aber  da  hier  iiber  die  nichtafri- 
kanische  Literatur  fast  keine  Beobachtungenvorliegen, 
wage  ich  es  vorlaufig  noch  nicht,  unseren  Provinzialen 
etwas  zu  vindizieren '  (Die  lokalen  Verschiedenheiten,  p. 
135).  If  now  we  examine  the  case  of  volo  in  Vitruvius, 
we  find  him  placing  it  22  times  before  the  infinitive  and  6 
times  after  the  infinitive.  But  the  Auctor  ad  Herennium 
has  it  42  times  before  and  18  times  after  (see  Marx's 
Index) ;  in  the  Bellum  Africum  the  use  is  equally  divided, 
seven  of  each  (WolrHin's  Index);  so  in  Varro's  Menippe- 
ans,  four  of  each  (Riese's  Index),  while  in  his  Res  Rusticae 
it  stands  first  22  times  and  after  the  infinitive  33  times. 
With  regard  to  possum,  Lupus  has  observed  that  in  Nepos 
the  infinitive  very  often  follows  it  and  other  verbs  (Der 
Sprachgebrauch  des  Nepos,  p.  191).  In  Vitruvius,  the  verb 
possum  is  used  with  the  infinitive  300  times  (Nohl's  Index). 
But  in  exactly  half  of  these,  there  is  a  negative  attached 
to  possum,  and  it  is  this  expression  of  impossibility  which 
Vitruvius  prefers  to  place  before  the  infinitive.  He  has 
126  instances  of  it  thus  placed  and  in  only  24  does  it  fol- 
low the  infinitive.  Of  the  other  1 50  cases  where  there  is  no 
negative  with  possum,  the  infinitive  precedes  76  times  and 
follows  74  times.  In  view  of  such  varieties,  I  do  not  see 
how  the  position  of  these  auxiliaries  can  be  used  in  dis- 
cussing the  date  of  Vitruvius  until  their  position  in  other 
authors  has  been  carefully  studied. 


212  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Thus  the  linguistic  and  stylistic  phenomena  noted  by 
Ussing  have  been  examined,  and  in  summarizing  them  it 
appears  that  there  are  only  a  very  few  which  cannot  be 
paralleled  either  exactly  or  in  principle  during  the  Re- 
publican, Augustan,  or  Silver  ages  of  Roman  literature. 
These  few  are :  the  impersonal  use  of  dignum  est  ut  (p. 
171),  necessitate  as  an  adverb  (p.  171),  forte  meaning  'per- 
haps' (p.  181),  and  trans  as  an  adverb  (p.  183).  And 
something  has  been  said  in  explanation  of  all  these  except 
the  last.  The  many  heads  of  Ussing's  indictment  are 
therefore  reduced  to  the  minimum.  But  what  if  it  be 
argued  that,  although  instances  of  the  several  phenomena 
may  be  found  in  various  authors  of  the  earlier  time,  yet 
since  they  are  not  all  found  in  any  one  author  except 
Vitruvius,  this  accumulation  of  them  in  him  points  to  late 
authorship  ?  The  answer  to  this  cumulative  argument  is 
that  it  begs  the  whole  question.  For,  as  I  have  pointed 
out  above  (p.  161),  no  other  technical  treatise  written  in 
the  better  age  is  extant,  and  therefore  we  are  not  entitled 
to  say  that  such  treatises  did  not  abound  in  examples  of  the 
phenomena  which  appear  in  Vitruvius.  As  for  the  resem- 
blances between  the  language  of  Vitruvius  and  that  of  the 
Romance  nations,  Krohn 1  has  already  observed  that  these 
are  a  priori  only  natural.  Latin  was  not  transmitted  to 
Romance  lands  by  the  polished  works  of  Cicero,  but  by 
the  every-day  writings  and  the  colloquial  speech  of  people 
like  Vitruvius,  —  professional  men,  publicani,  business  men, 
and  soldiers.  The  resemblances,  therefore,  are  not  neces- 
sarily evidence  of  late  authorship.  In  conclusion,  I  may 
add  that  it  seems  improbable  that  anybody  who  thinks  that 

1  Berl.  Phil,  Woch.,  1897,  p.  774. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  VITRUVIUS  213 

Vitruvius  is  like  the  late  Latin  authors,  can  have  actually 
read  him  through  with  much  care.  They,  whatever  their 
faults  of  grammar  and  style,  are  smooth  and  easy  reading 
by  comparison  with  him.  He  has  all  the  marks  of  one 
unused  to  composition,  to  whom  writing  is  a  painful 
task.  A  forgery  or  a  late  compilation  of  an  earlier  work 
would  presumably  proceed  from  a  hand  used  to  literary 
performances. 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS1 

(i)   On  the  Text 

2,  praef.  2(31,  24):  cogitationes  et  formas  dignas  tuae 
claritati. 

HERE  the  MSS.  have  the  dative  with  dignus.  Wesseling 
(Obs.  Var.  p.  68)  emended  to  the  genitive  claritatis, 
and  Rose  in  both  his  editions  has  followed,  in  spite  of  Wolff  - 
lin's  protest.2  It  is  true  that  the  genitive  with  dignus  is 
not  unknown:  cf.  Balbus  ap.  Cic.  Att.  8,  15  A,  i;  Verg. 
A.  12,  649  (with  indignus);  Tac.  A.  15,  14;  to  say  nothing 
of  the  disputed  passage  in  Plaut.  Trin,  1153  (Nonius  for 
the  genitive,  but  the  MSS.  of  Plautus  for  the  ablative). 
Still  the  dative  also  is  found  as  follows:  Plaut.  Poen.  256: 
diem  .  .  .  dignum  Veneri  (emended  to  the  ablative  by 
Ritschl  and  so  Leo);  Sail.  Or.  Phil.  20:  decernite  digna 
nomini  (where  Maurenbrecher,  i,  77,  20,  emends  to  the 
ablative) ;  Cod.  Theod.  9,  28,  I  :  quoniam  nee  condigna  cri- 
mini  ultio  est ;  CGL.  ii,  305,  12  :  eTraivov  afto?  laudi  dig- 
nus. See  also  Schmalz,  Lat.  Gramm.?  p.  249,  who  cites 
from  late  Latin  examples  of  this  dative  in  Commodian, 
Vopiscus,  and  Arnobius,  as  well  as  passages  in  Apuleius, 
Jerome,  and  Cyprian,  where  the  form  leaves  the  question 
of  genitive  or  dative  doubtful.  To  these  last  may  be  added 
the  Pompeian  dignus  rei publicae(CIL.  iv,  566;  702;  768), 

1  From  the  Harvard  Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  1906,  xvii,  1-14. 

2  Rhein.  Mus.  xxxvii,  p.  115. 

2I4 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS  215 

and  note  also  the  usage  of  Priscillian  (Archiv,  iii,  p.  317). 
As  a  good  warrant  for  the  dative  with  dignus,  Wolfflin 
suggests  the  use  of  decet  with  the  dative  in  early  Latin ; 
cf.  Sommer,  p.  241,  '  dig-nus  aus  *dec-nos  zu  decet.'  We 
may  now  examine  the  constructions  which  actually  do 
accompany  dignus  in  Vitruvius  apart  from  this  passage. 

The  word  is  used  certainly  once  as  a  mere  attributive 
adjective:  83,  15,  dignam  et  utilissimam  rem ;  and  prob- 
ably this  should  be  the  explanation  of  158,  6:  merenti 
digna  constitit  poena,  for  the  dative  merenti  here  belongs 
to  the  whole  following  phrase  and  not  to  digna  alone. 
Then  we  have  the  impersonal  dignum  est  once  with  an  ut 
clause  in  46,  6 :  dignum  esset  ut  .  .  .  perficerentur,  a  con- 
struction found  with  dignus  used  personally  in  Plautus, 
Livy,  and  Quintilian  (Schmalz,  p.  406).  Once  the  neuter 
dignum  is  found  personally  with  the  passive  infinitive,  in 
212,  14:  id  enim  magis  erat  institui  dignum.  We  have 
the  neuter  dignum  used  impersonally  with  the  passive 
infinitive  in  Livy,  8,  26,  6:  quibus  dignius  credi  est;  cf. 
Cic.  Quinct.  95  :  indignum  est  a  pari  vinci.  But  in  Vitru- 
vius the  verb  erat  has  a  neuter  subject  expressed,  so  that 
the  usage  resembles  dignus  or  digna  (fern.)  with  the  pas- 
sive infinitive,  noted  as  not  found  in  prose  before  the  Silver 
Age  by  Schmalz  (p.  281  f.)  and  Drager  (ii,  331  f.).  It  may 
be  remarked  in  passing  that  dignum  est  with  a  passive 
infinitive  is  (understanding  the  infinitive  as  originally  a 
dative)  a  support  for  the  dative  case  with  dignus,  and  here 
again  the  connection  of  dignus  with  decet  is  suggested  by 
Plaut.  Poen.  258  :  mine  me  decet  donari  cado  vini  veteris  ?l 

1 1  owe  this  to  Professor  Minton  Warren,  who  also  points  out  that  it  is 
even  conceivable  that  the  dative  was  the  original  case  used  with  dignus,  and 


2l6  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

Again,  Vitruvius  has  the  impersonal  dignum  est  with  the 
active  infinitive,  237,  7:  sed  titi  fuerint  ea  exquisita,  dig- 
num est  studiosis  agnoscere ;  cf.  Plaut.  Ps.  1013:  salutem 
scriptam  dignumst  dignis  mittere ;  Verg.  A,  6,  173  :  si 
credere  dignum.  I  have  no  examples  of  this  use  in  prose 
before  Gellius  (see  Drager,  ii,  332)  for  dignum,  but  for  in- 
digmim,  cf .  Sail.  lug.  79,  I  :  non  indignum  videtur  egregium 
f acinus  commemorare.  Whether  in  Vitruvius  studiosis  is 
dative  or  ablative,  I  see  no  way  of  deciding.  Finally, 
Vitruvius  has  a  personal  use,  in  the  masculine  gender,  of 
digniores  with  the  active  infinitive,  134,  I  :  ipsos  potius  dig- 
niores  esse  ad  suam  voluntatem  quam  ad  alienam  pecuniae 
consumere  summam.  I  can  cite  no  prose  parallel  for  this 
before  Plin.  Pan.  7:  dignus  alter  eligi,  alter  eligere ;  cf. 
Apul.  M.  i,  8:  tu  dignus  es  extrema  sustinere ;  but  in 
poetry  the  usage  seems  to  appear  first  in  Catullus  68,  131: 
concedere  digna;  and  that  it  was  familiar  to  Horace  appears 
from  Ep.  I,  10,  48  :  tortum  digna  sequi  potius  quam  ducere 
funem,  and  (with  indignus)  from  Ep.  I,  3,  35  :  indigni  fra- 
ternum  rumpere  foedus  (i.e.  quos  non  decet}\  cf.  also  A.  P. 
231.  The  commentators  speak  of  this  construction  as 
modelled  on  the  Greek  idiom  with  afto<?  and  Si/cato?.  It 
is  not  strange  that  Vitruvius,  who  drew  so  much  from 
Greek  authors,  should  have  been  influenced,  just  as  poets 
were,  by  Greek  syntax. 

This  examination  of  the  usages  with  dignus  in  Vitru- 
vius shows  such  a  considerable  variety  that  it  becomes 
obviously  unsafe  to  emend  away  the  dative  claritati  in 
3i,  24- 

that  the  ablative  came  in  and  prevailed  through  a  misunderstanding  of  the 
doubtful  forms  in  inflection. 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS  217 

2,  8,  1 6  (52,  7):  quibus  et  vectigalibus  et  praeda  saepius 

licitum  fuerat  .  .  .  habere. 

Here  the  MSS.  have  saepius,  while  Rose z  follows  Nohl 
(Anal.  Vitr.,  p.  19  f.)  with  the  emendation  saeptis.  Nohl 
says  merely  :  '  quid  sibi  velit  saepius  nescio.'  But  it  seems 
to  be  nothing  except  the  not  uncommon  use  of  the  com- 
parative degree  of  an  adverb  instead  of  the  positive ;  see 
Kohler,  Acta  Erlang.  i,  410;  Wolfflin,  Comparation,  p.  63  ; 
and  Praun,  Syntax  des  Vitruv,  p.  80.  In  Vitruvius  him- 
self the  comparative  form  saepius  occurs  six  times  (see 
Nohl's  Index),  and  in  none  of  them  does  it  have  a  dis- 
tinctly comparative  sense.  As  for  the  emendation  saeptis, 
that  verb  is  used  but  twice  in  Vitruvius  (203,  3;  211,  6), 
both  times  literally.  And  its  metaphorical  use  in  other 
authors  seems  to  convey  nothing  like  the  sense  which  the 
emendation  would  require  here. 

2,  9,  i  (54,  23):  inanibus  et  patentibus  vents  in  se  reci- 
piet  lambendo  sucum  et  ita  solidescit  et  redit  in  pristitiam 
naturae  firmitatem. 

Here  Rose  2  changes  to  the  plurals  recipient,  solidescunt, 
and  redeunt,  as  referring  to  corpora  muliebria  in  54,  16. 
But  in  line  18  we  have  in  corpore,  to  which  id  ex  quo  in 
line  21  refers.  It  seems  needless,  therefore,  to  go  back 
to  corpora  muliebria,  and  I  should  keep  recipiet  with  G 
(recipient,  H  S),  and  solidescit  and  redit  with  all  three 
manuscripts. 

5,  praef.  4  (104,  7) :  uti  sunt  etiam  tesserae  quas  in  alveo 
ludentes  iaciunt. 

So  H  G  and  Rose  in  his  first  edition.     S  has  in  alea. 


2lS  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Rose  in  his  second  edition  changes  to  in  alveola,  based 
upon  Varro  ap.  Gell.  I,  20:  quales  sunt  tesserae  quibus  in 
alveola  luditur  (here,  however,  one  good  MS.  has  albeo,  the 
others  albeolo).  Rose's  change  seems  unnecessary.  It  is 
true  that  alveolus  is  found  in  the  sense  of  '  diceboard '  in 
Paul.  Fest,  Lucilius,  Cicero,  and  Juvenal  (for  the  passages, 
see  the  Thesaurus);  but  alveus  occurs  in  the  same  sense 
in  Plin.  N.  H.  37,  13  ;  Val.  Max.  8,  8,  2 ;  Suet.  Claud.  33 ; 
and  Varro  himself  uses  the  word  in  the  sense  of  the  game 
of  dice  in  frag.  ap.  Non.  108,  26.  Although  the  passage 
and  context  in  Vitruvius,  about  the  cube,  may  well  be 
based  upon  Varro  (see  Thiel,  Jahrb.  f.  Phil,  civ,  p.  366), 
yet  a  comparison  of  both  in  their  entirety  will  show  that 
there  is  no  reason  for  thinking  that  he  followed  the  words 
of  Varro  with  slavish  exactness. 

5,  1 1,  3  (128,  4) :  altera  simplex  ita  facta  uti  in  partibus 
quae  fuerint  circa  parietes  et  quae  erit  ad  columnas,  margi- 
nes  habeat  uti  semitas. 

Here,  for  erit,  the  inferior  manuscripts  and  the  editio 
princeps  give  erunt,  which  has  been  adopted  by  Rose  and 
the  other  editors.  The  best  manuscripts  have  erit,  which 
seems  to  me  to  be  right.  Vitruvius  provides  that  the 
sunken  running  track  under  this  colonnade  should  have 
margines,  serving  as  semitae,  ' on  the  sides  which  are' 
along  the  surrounding  walls  (there  would  of  course  be 
three  of  these,  one  at  each  end  and  one  forming  the  inner 
boundary),  and  '  on  the  side  which  is '  along  the  columns. 
Of  course  there  would  be  only  one  such  side,  hence  the 
singular  number. 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS  2 19 

5,  12,  6  (130,  1 6):  locus  qui  ea  saeptione 

finitus  fuerit  exinaniatur  sicceturque,  et  ibi  inter  saepti- 
ones  fundamenta  fodiantur.  Si  terrena  entnt,  usque  ad 
solidum  crassiora  quant  qui  murus  supra  futurus  erit  exin- 
aniantursiccenturque,  et  tune  structura  ex  caementis  calce  et  20 
harena  compleantur.  Sin  autem  mollis  locus  erit,  palis 
ustilatis  alneis  aut  oleaginis  configantur  et  carbonibus  com- 
pleantur. 

Here  the  manuscripts  exhibit  several  errors  in  giving 
the  singular  of  verbs  instead  of  the  plural.  In  lines  19- 
20  they  have  exinaniatur  sicceturque,  due  to  the  occurrence 
of  that  phrase  in  the  singular  in  line  17,  and  perhaps 
further  influenced  by  futurus  erit,  but  obviously  wrong,  as 
crassiora  shows,  and  corrected  by  Marini.  In  line  21, 
codd.  H  S  Gc  have  compleatur,  due  to  the  impression  that 
structura  is  a  nominative,  but  correctly  transmitted  as  a 
plural  by  G.  So  far,  then,  the  manuscripts  erred  and 
have  been  rightly  abandoned.  But  in  the  last  line  the 
two  verbs  configantur  and  compleantur  are  plural  in  all 
the  manuscripts,  while  the  editors  have  followed  the  edi- 
tio  princeps  with  its  readings  configatur  and  compleatur, 
doubtless  due  to  the  singular  number  of  locus.  The  plu- 
rals, however,  are  correct  and  refer  back  to  fundamenta 
(line  1 8),  with  which  agree  erunt  (18),  exinaniantur  siccen- 
turque  (19-20),  and  compleantur  (21);  cf .  fundamenta  im- 
pleantur,  76,  3;  infra  fundamenta  aedificiorum  palationibus 
crebre  fixa,  57,  12.  Editors  should  therefore  restore  these 
plurals,  which  are  indeed  the  lectio  dijficilior.  It  can 
scarcely  be  thought  that  they  got  into  the  archetype  from 
assimilation  to  compleantur  in  line  21,  for  the  singular  locus 
erit  intervenes. 


220  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

7,  praef.  12  (159,  6):  Philo  (sc.  edidit  volumeri)  de  ae- 
dium  sacrarum  symmetriis  et  de  armamentaria  qtiod  fuerat 
Piraeei  portu. 

The  word  fuerat  is  the  reading  of  the  manuscripts.  A 
correction  to  fecerat  was  suggested  by  Hemsterhuis  (ad 
Poll.  10,  1 88:  'credo  legendum  fecerat'\  and  this  correc- 
tion is  adopted  by  Schneider  and  succeeding  editors.  It 
is  unnecessary.  To  be  sure,  Vitruvius  has  been  using,  and 
uses  in  the  next  clause,  the  present  tense  est  of  the  build- 
ings described  by  the  authors  whom  he  is  cataloguing; 
but  these  other  buildings  were  still  in  existence  in  his  day. 
The  armamentarium  of  Philo,  however,  had  been  burnt  by 
Sulla;  see  Appian,  B.  M.  41  ;  Plut.  Sull.  14.  It  is  there- 
fore to  the  disappearance  of  the  building  that  Vitruvius 
wishes  to  refer,  not  to  the  fact  that  it  was  built  by  Philo. 
For  a  similar  use  of  fuerat,  cf.  28,  22  :  reposito  autem 
gnomone  ubi  ante  a  fuerat,  and  216,  9;  221,  23.  In  gen- 
eral, for  Vitruvius's  employment  of  fuerat  instead  of  erat 
or  fuit,  see  Eberhard,  de  Vitruvii  genere  dicendi,  ii,  p.  10. 

7,  10,  2  (180,  6) :  namque  aedificatur  locus  uti  laconicum. 

Here  Rose2  reads  lacus  for  locus,  following  a  suggestion 
of  Nohl  in  his  Index,  who  based  the  change  upon  Faven- 
tinus  307,  16:  lacusculus  curva  camera  struatur.  But  an 
inspection  of  the  context  of  Faventinus  shows  that  his 
lacusculus  (repeated  twice  below)  is  for  Vitruvius's  laconi- 
cum,  not  for  his  locus.  And  furthermore  the  emendation 
is  unfortunate  because  it  introduces  into  Vitruvius  a  mean- 
ing for  the  word  lacus  not  elsewhere  found  in  him.  He 
does  not  use  it  of  anything  that  is  roofed  over.  Generally 
he  has  it  in  the  sense  of  '  lake  ' ;  once  it  means  an  artificial 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS  221 

pool  or  basin  for  water  (207,  9),  and  once  '  mortar  bed ' 
(165,  24). 

8,  3  >  14(198,  9):  sunt  enim  Boeotia  flumina  Cephisos  et 
Me  las,  Lucanis  Crathis,  Troia  Xanthus. 

Here  editions  have  always  had  Lucania  or  Lucaniae, 
although  the  manuscripts  give  only  Lucanis.  The  latter 
is  the  correct  form  for  the  name  of  this  district  in  the  early 
and  Augustan  period,  as  has  been  shown  for  other  authors 
by  Wolfflin,  Archiv,  xii,  332.  It  should  be  restored  in 
Vitruvius. 

9,  praef.  16  (217,  23):  Itaque  qui  litterarum  iucunditati- 
bus  instinctas  habent  wentes. 

Here  Rose  in  both  editions  reads  intinctas  with  the  late 
manuscripts,  while  the  best  manuscripts  give  instinctas. 
The  reading  of  Rose  seems  very  improbable.  It  is  true 
that  nowhere  else  in  Vitruvius  do  we  find  a  form  from 
instinguo,  and  that  we  do  find  forms  from  intinguo  (or 
intingo)  five  times  without  any  variants  (see  Nohl's  Index}. 
But  in  none  of  these  five  is  the  verb  used  metaphorically ; 
it  is  always  employed  literally,  in  connection  with  water, 
in  Vitruvius,  and  I  am  not  aware  of  a  metaphorical  use 
of  it  in  any  other  author.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  read 
instinctas  here,  we  find  it  in  its  usual  sense,  of  which  any 
lexicon  will  afford  examples. 

9,  3,  i  (227,  i):  deinde  e  geminis  cum  iniit  ad  cancrum, 
qui  brevissimum  tenet  caeli  spatium. 

Here  Barbari,  followed  by  Marini,  emended  brevissi- 
mum  to  longissimum,  and  Reber  changed  qui  to  quo,  thus 


222  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

making  sol  and  not  cancer  the  subject  of  tenet,  and  giving 
the  reading  quo  longissimum  tenet  caeli  spatium  as  adopted 
in  both  of  Rose's  editions.  These  scholars  were  all  influ- 
enced by  the  passage  below  in  §  3,  where  of  the  course  of 
the  sun  in  Capricorn  it  is  said  :  brevissimum  caeli  percurrit 
spatium.  It  does  not  seem  necessary,  however,  to  make 
the  two  passages  correspond  by  insisting  on  sol  as  the 
subject  of  both.  If  we  keep  qui  in  the  first,  referring  to 
Cancer,  and  retain  also  brevissimum,  we  find  that  Vitru- 
vius  is  speaking  not,  as  in  §  3,  of  the  length  of  the  day, 
but  of  the  size  of  Cancer,  which  in  fact  occupies  the 
shortest  parallel  within  the  Zodiac  (that  is,  in  modern  ter- 
minology, the  section  from  it  to  the  pole  is  shortest)  — 
'  the  shortest  space  in  heaven,'  as  Vitruvius  says.  On  the 
small  size  of  this  sign,  cf.  Hipparchus,  p.  126,  12  Manitius: 
Kaddjrep  evOews  6  fiev  KdpicLvos  ovSe  TO  rptrov  ftepos  eTre^et 
TO£»  Sco&eicaTrjiJLopiov.  And  observe  also  what  Eudoxus  (Ars 
Astron.  ed.  Blass,  p.  18,  col.  ix),  in  speaking  of  the  courses 
of  the  planets,  moon,  and  sun,  says  about  Cancer  :  ov  yap 
ry  ISia  Staoratret  trepL^epovrai  irepl  rov  pevovra  TrdXov,  dAA* 
J)Tav  fj,ev  &<ri  ev  rq>  Ka/m'i/a),  ev  ry  e\a%i<rTy  Staarcwm  eltrtv. 


(2)  On  the  Subject-Matter 

2,  praef.  I  (31,  10):  is  e  patria  a  propinquis  et  amicis 
tulit  ad  primos  ordines  et  purpuratos  lift  eras  ut  aditus  habe- 
ret  faciliores. 

It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  observed  by  the  commen- 
tators or  translators  that  primos  ordines  here  is  a  military 
term  (cf.  for  instance  Caes.  B.  G.  6,  7,  8  ;  Liv.  30,  4,  i), 
and  that  consequently  such  general  expressions  as  '  men 
of  the  first  rank'  (Gwilt),  'Manner  der  ersten  Ranges' 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS  223 

(Reber)  will  not  fit  it.     It  means  'the  principal  military 
men.' 

5,  6,  2  (117,  1 6):  supra  autem  alternis  itineribus  superi- 
ores  cunei  medii  dirigantur. 

These  words  do  not  signify  that  above  the  praecinctio  in 
a  Roman  theatre  there  were  twice  as  many  stairways  as 
there  were  below  it.  If  Vitruvius  meant  that,  he  would 
not  repeat  the  idea  in  5,  7,  2  (120,  23),  where  in  his  de- 
scription of  the  Greek  theatre  he  certainly  prescribes  such 
a  doubling.  He  would  say  nothing  there :  for  in  that 
chapter  he  is  treating  only  the  differences  between  the 
Greek  and  the  Roman  theatre.  In  the  Roman  theatre, 
therefore,  he  means  that  above  the  praecinctio  the  stairs 
do  not  continue  on  the  same  lines  as  the  stairs  below  it, 
but  that  they  are  laid  out  on  lines  alternating  with  the 
lines  of  the  lower  ones.  He  employs  here  no  such  words 
as  iterum  and  amplificantur,  found  in  the  Greek  chapter. 
Hence  it  seems  that  in  Dorpfeld  and  Reisch,  Das  griech- 
ische  Theater,  p.  162,  cf.  164,  the  plan  of  the  Roman  thea- 
tre is  erroneous  in  this  respect. 

8,  i,  i  (185,  18):  uti procumbatur  in  denies  antequam  sol 
exortus  fuerit. 

In  this  passage,  where  Vitruvius  is  describing  a  method 
of  searching  for  water,  he  uses  the  expression  in  denies  in 
the  sense  of  pronus,  the  word  which  is  in  fact  employed 
by  Pliny  (N.  H.  31,  44)  and  Palladius  (9,  8)  in  their  descrip- 
tions of  the  same  method.  Palladius,  however,  has  iacens, 
not  procumbent,  while  the  construction  of  Pliny's  sentence 
requires  no  verb  with  pronus.  On  the  other  hand,  Faven- 


224  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

tinus,  in  his  epitome  of  Vitruvius  (289,  20),  has :  aequali- 
ter  in  terra  procumbatur.  Now  the  Vitruvian  use  of  in 
denies  is  found,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  in  no  other  Latin 
author,  and  consequently  some  editors  have  looked  upon 
it  with  suspicion ;  see  the  notes  of  Schneider  and  of 
Marini.  But  my  friend,  Professor  E.  S.  Sheldon,  has 
drawn  my  attention  to  a  gloss  on  Genesis  17,  13  (cecidit 
Abraham  promts  in  faciem\  found  in  the  Reichenau  col- 
lection, edited  by  Foerster  and  Koschwitz,  Altfranzosisch.es 
Uebungsbuck*  (1902),  p.  3,  43.  The  gloss  reads  thus: 
'  pronus :  qui  a  dent',  iacet.'  This  a  denf.  seems  obvi- 
ously intended  for  the  old  French  adenz,  used  in  the  sense 
of  sur  les  dents,  sur  la  face,  a  plat  venire  (cf .  Godefroy, 
Diet,  de  VAncienne  Langue  Fran$aise,  s.  v.).  Thus  we 
find  the  verse  (Rol.  2358  Miiller):  'sur  1'herbe  vert,  s'i 
est  culchiez  adenz.'  It  therefore  seems  probable  that  in 
Vitruvius  alone  is  preserved  indication  of  a  colloquial 
usage  of  classical  times  which  led  to  the  employment  of 
adenz  in  old  French.  The  late  Latin  verb  indento,  lead- 
ing to  French  endenter  (cf.  adenter),  has  quite  a  different 
meaning. 

9,  i,  15  (224,  4):  similiter  astra  nitentia  contra  mundi 
cursum  suis  itineribus  perficiunt  circumitum. 

Here  Nohl  in  his  Index  takes  nitentia  from  niteo,  and 
Reber  and  other  translators  render  the  word  as  if  it  meant 
'shining,'  'glittering.'  But  Terquem,  in  his  very  useful 
study  of  Vitruvius  (Mtmoires  de  la  Socie"tt  des  Sciences  de 
Lille,  4e  Serie,  xiv,  p.  117),  rightly  renders  thus:  'de 
me" me  les  astres  luttant  centre  le  mouvement  du  monde, 
font  leur  circuit  dans  leurs  orbites.'  In  fact,  Vitruvius 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS  225 

uses  the  verb  nitor  here  to  suggest  that  there  is  a  struggle 
on  the  part  of  the  planets  against  the  revolution  of  the 
heavens,  like  the  struggle  of  the  ants  on  the  wheel  in  the 
experiment  which  he  has  just  described.  He  uses  nitor 
of  the  movement  of  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac  in  219,  24, 
and  of  the  flight  of  birds  up  into  the  air  in  18,  8.  He  has 
only  once  employed  a  form  of  niteo.  This  is  the  homo- 
nym nitentia,  used  of  the  brilliant  polish  of  stucco  (169,  5). 
Of  the  brilliancy  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  the  verb  luceo  is 
used,  and  four  or  five  times  (see  Nohl's  Index). 

(3)   On  the  Date  of  Vitruvius 

This  is  of  course  a  much  debated  question  into  which, 
in  its  entirety,  I  do  not  propose  to  enter  here.  But  I  think 
it  worth  while  to  mention  the  following  points  which  seem 
to  have  escaped  the  attention  of  those  who  have  written 
upon  it,  and  which  appear  to  me  to-  be  arguments  useful 
to  those  who,  like  myself,  believe  that  the  work  was  com- 
posed certainly  in  the  time  of  Augustus,  if  not  very  early 
in  his  reign. 

2,  9,  1 6  (60,  12):  cuius  materies  si  esset  facultas  adporta- 
tionibus  adurbem,  maximae  haberentur  in  aedificiis  utilitates, 
etc.  Vitruvius  has  been  speaking  at  some  length  of  larch 
wood,  and  having  stated  (§14)  that  it  is  known  only  to  the 
people  on  the  banks  of  the  Po  and  the  shores  of  the  Adri- 
atic, and  having  described  its  characteristics  and  related  a 
curious  anecdote  about  it  in  connection  with  one  of  the  cam- 
paigns of  Caesar,  says  in  our  section  that  it  is  transported 
by  way  of  the  Po  to  Ravenna  and  that  it  is  to  be  had  in 
Fano,  Pesaro,  Ancona,  and  the  other  towns  in  that  vicinity. 


226  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Then  follows  the  sentence  which  I  have  quoted.  The  idea 
that  there  should  be  difficulty  in  the  transportation  of  larch 
wood  from  the  north  of  Italy  to  Rome  points  distinctly  to 
the  days  of  small  things.  A  vast  change  from  such  an 
idea  had  come  about  by  the  time  of  Pliny,  when,  as  he 
says  (IV.  If.  2,  n  8),  '  all  seas  had  been  laid  open  for  the 
sake  of  gain,'  —  and  he  might  have  added  '  for  the  sake  of 
luxury '  (see  Friedlander,  Sittengeschichte*,  iii,  pp.  87-99). 
And  it  so  happens  that  as  early  as  the  time  of  Tiberius 
larch  trees  for  building  purposes  had  been  brought  to 
Rome  from  even  farther  away  than  the  north  of  Italy, 
namely,  from  Rhaetia  (Plin.  N.  H.  16,  190).  One  of  these 
was  1 20  Roman  feet  in  length  (ibid.  200).  With  this  re- 
mark of  Vitruvius  about  larch  may  be  compared  what  he 
says  (46,  5  ff.)  about  the  necessity  of  using  inferior  build- 
ing stone  because  it  was  found  near  Rome,  although  so 
much  better  a  quality  was  found  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Lake  Bolsena  in  Etruria  (45,  15).  Yet  the  ransacking  of 
the  whole  known  world  for  all  sorts  of  stone  was  in  Pliny's 
time  'the  principal  craze  of  the  age'  (N.  H.  36,  i). 

5,  10  (124,  30  ff.):  In  Vitruvius's  description  of  public 
baths  we  recognize  again  the  day  of  small  things.  The 
arrangements  which  he  describes  are  those  which  are 
found  in  the  Stabian  and  the  Forum  baths  of  Pompei,  the 
former  of  which  belongs  to  the  time  of  the  pre-Roman 
period  there,  the  latter  to  the  time  of  Sulla.  Every  student 
of  Pompei  knows  how  great  is  the  difference  between  these 
two  old-fashioned  establishments  and  more  elaborate  Cen- 
tral baths  which  were  still  building  at  the  time  of  the  de- 
struction of  the  city  in  79  A.D.  It  seems  impossible  that 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS 


227 


Vitruvius  could  have  written  his  account  after  the  opening 
in  Rome  of  the  great  Thermae  of  Agrippa,  the  first  luxuri- 
ous public  bathing  establishment  to  be  built  in  Rome. 
This  was  probably  opened  in  19  B.C.  (see  Huelsen  in 
Pauly-Wissowa,  i,  p.  899).  Vitruvius  never  uses  the  word 
thermae.  Furthermore,  in  8,  6,  2  (207,  9)  we  find  a  casual 
remark  which  seems  to  show  that  he  regarded  baths  as 
private  enterprises.  This  is  where  he  prescribes  that  from 
the  reservoir  (castellum)  at  the  city  walls  three  sets  of  pipes 
should  run,  one  supplying  the  lacus  et  salientes  (free-flow- 
ing public  basins  and  fountains),  one  for  private  house 
supply,  and  a  third  running  in  balineas  ut  vectigal  quotan- 
nis  populo  praestent.  Of  course  no  revenue  was  expected 
from  the  great  baths  of  the  empire. 

7,  3-14:  In  the  whole  treatment,  in  these  chapters,  of 
the  decoration  of  walls  in  the  Roman  house,  the  use  of 
marble  linings  (crustae)  is  ignored.  In  the  sixth  chapter, 
marble  is  recognized  only  as  a  material  which  was  pow- 
dered in  order  to  form  the  caementum  marmoreum  which 
produced  the  highly  polished  stucco  covering  of  walls. 
On  the  other  hand,  Pliny  begins  his  account  of  wall  paint- 
ing by  saying  that  it  is  almost  an  obsolete  art,  nunc  in  totum 
a  marmoribus pulsa  (35,  2),  and  in  another  place  he  notes 
that  marble  linings  were  first  used  in  Rome  in  the  house 
of  Mamurra  (36,  48).  This  man  was  Catullus's  prodigal, 
and  his  date  is  therefore  just  before  Augustus.  That  this 
emperor  found  marble  in  no  general  use  for  building  pur- 
poses is  shown  by  his  well-known  remark :  mannoream  se 
relinquere  quam  latericiam  accepisset  (Suet.  Oct.  28).  And 
Friedlander  (Sittengeschickte*,  iii,  91  f-)  rightly  observes 


228  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

that  the  Vitruvian  dwelling  house  of  the  best  class  is  that 
which  we  find  portrayed  in  the  poetry  of  Horace,  Proper- 
tius,  and  Tibullus. 

10,  2,  13  (251,  3):  Nostra  vero  memoria  cum  colossici 
Apollinis  in  fano  basis  esset  a  vetustate  diffracta,  metuentes 
ne  caderet  ea  statua  et  frangeretur,  locaverunt  ex  eisdem 
lapidicinis  basim  excidendam.  Conduxit  qiiidam  Paeonius. 
It  is  truly  tantalizing  that  this  passage  with  its  nostra 
memoria,  a  phrase  apparently  so  promising,  gives  us  really 
nothing  definite  about  the  date  at  which  it  was  written. 
Mortet,  who  believes  that  Vitruvius  wrote  in  the  time  of 
Titus,  seems  to  think  (Revue  Arche"ologiquet  1902,  p.  59) 
that  he  is  referring  to  something  which  was  done  under 
Vespasian,  and  compares  Suet.  Vesp.  18  :  Colossi  refec- 
torem  insigni  congiario  magnaque  mercede  donavit.  But 
the  word  Colossi  here  probably  refers  to  Nero's  Colossus 
(Huelsen  in  Pauly-Wissowa,  s.v.,  p.  589;  cf.  Dio  Cass. 
66,  15),  and  even  if  it  does  not,  Suetonius  was  talking  of 
something  in  Rome,  whereas  the  word  fano  in  Vitruvius 
seems  to  show  that  he  meant  a  temple  outside  of  Rome. 
The  strict  manner  in  which  Vitruvius  employs  this  word 
has  not  been  observed  by  the  commentators.  He  has 
fanum  seventeen  times,  but  never  (unless  here)  of  any 
definite  temple  in  Rome  or  Italy.  He  uses  it  of  Juno  at 
Argos  (84,  22),  Mars,  Venus,  and  Mercury  at  Halicarnas- 
sus  (50,  3;  6;  26),  Pater  Liber  in  Athens  (122,  3),  Diana 
at  Ephesus  (249,  28;  251,  I  and  22),  Minerva  at  Priene 
(IS9>  3);  also  °f  a  temple  in  Syracuse  which  he  does  not 
name  (215,  12),  and  of  temples  in  Ionia  (85,  15).  This 
accounts  for  eleven  occurrences.  Then  he  has  extra 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS 


229 


murum  Veneris,  Volcani,  Martis  fana  conlocari,  etc.,  in  the 
passage  where  he  is  quoting  from  the  Etruscan  sacred 
books  on  the  position  of  temples  (30,  1 5).  The  other  four 
passages  are  still  more  general :  in  them  the  word  is  plu- 
ral and  no  divinity  is  mentioned  (13,24;  15,  13;  59,  i; 
172,  17).  In  our  place,  therefore,  I  have  no  doubt  that  he 
means  a  temple  of  Apollo  in  some  Greek  city,1  and  it 
seems  probable  that  the  city  was  Ephesus,  for  the  words 
ex  eisdem  lapidicinis  refer  to  the  quarries  which  he  has 
just  mentioned  twice  in  connection  with  the  fanum  Dianae 
at  Ephesus  (249,  27;  251,  i).  The  second  of  these  reads: 
non  enim  plus  sunt  ab  lapidicinis  ad  fanum  milia  passuum 
octOy  nee  ullus  est  clivus  sed  perpetuus  campus.  Then  our 
passage  forms  the  next  sentence :  nostra  vero  memoria  cum 
colossici  Apollinis  infano,  etc.  Here  it  seems  probable  to 
me  that  in  fano  means  'in  the  temple  of  Apollo ','  not  'in 
the  temple  of  Ephesian  Diana,'  as  Biirchner,  following 
others  before  him,  holds  in  his  recent  article  on  Ephesus 
in  Pauly-Wissowa  (p.  2812).  There  is  no  real  evidence 
for  this  latter  view,  since  Pliny's  words,  {Myron)  fecit  et 
Apollinem  quern  ab  triumviro  Antonio  sublatum  restituit 
Ephesiis  divus  Augustus  (34,  58),  do  not  necessarily  refer 
to  the  Artemision.  Apollo  was  worshiped  under  seven 
different  titles  at  Ephesus  (Biirchner,  ibid.  p.  2804) ;  per- 
haps this  statue  was  in  the  temple  of  Apolla  Pythius  on 
the  harbor  (Athenaeus,  361  e).  It  is  tempting,  but  of 
course  would  be  erroneous,  to  think  that  Vitruvius's  anec- 
dote about  the  making  of  a  new  pedestal  for  the  colossal 

1  Jordan,  Hermes,  xiv,  577,  observes  that  in  Cicero  and  his  contemporaries 
fanum  is  used  of  Greek  or  other  foreign  temples,  but  not  of  temples  in  the 
city  of  Rome. 


230  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

Apollo  is  to  be  coupled  with  the  passage  of  Pliny  which 
has  just  been  cited,  and  to  conclude  that  nostra  memoria 
refers  to  the  time  of  Augustus.  This  is  still  more  tempt- 
ing when  we  remember  that  in  the  Res  Gestae,  4,  49, 
Augustus  says :  in  templis  omnium  ci-vitatium  provinciae 
Asiae  victor  ornamenta  reposui ;  cf.  Strabo,  14,  i,  14,  p. 
637  (three  colossal  statues  by  Myron  plundered  from 
Samos  by  Antony,  two  of  which,  Athene  and  Heracles, 
were  returned  by  Augustus,  and  the  third,  Zeus,  placed 
on  the  Capitol) ;  and  for  other  acts  of  restitution,  see  Dio 
Cass.  51,  17;  Strabo,  13,  I,  30,  p.  595.  But  there  is  noth- 
ing in  all  this  to  warrant  an  actual  conviction  that  Augus- 
tus or  any  other  emperor  had  to  do  with  the  particular 
affair  which  Vitruvius  describes. 

(4)  Templum  and  Aedes 

Since  I  have  spoken  of  the  use  of  fanum  in  Vitruvius, 
showing  how  carefully  he  employs  the  word,  it  may  be 
worth  while  to  note  that  he  is  equally  correct  in  his  use 
of  templum?-  He  has  the  word  thirteen  times  (exclusive 
of  three  passages  in  which  the  plural  of  it  denotes  the 
architectural  members,  the  'purlines').  It  happens  that 
he  never  applies  it  to  any  definite  Roman  temple.  In 
seven  passages  it  is  used  in  the  wider  sense  of  a  conse- 
crated place  set  apart  for  a  god  or  gods,  a  perfectly  cor- 
rect use,2  although  in  no  one  of  these  passages  is  there 
any  distinct  reference  to  the  Roman  inauguratio.  That  he 

1  Besides  Jordan's  article  on  templum,  fanum,  and  acdts  already  cited 
{Hermes,  xiv,  567  ff.),  there  is  a  later  treatment  by  Bouche-Leclercq  in  Da- 
remberg  et  Saglio,  ii,  2,  p.  973  ff.     But  neither  of  these  scholars  deals  with 
Vitruvius. 

2  See  the  Thesaurus,  s.v.  atdes,  p.  911,  58. 


NOTES  ON  VITRUVIUS  231 

had  in  mind  the  original  difference  between  such  a  conse- 
crated space  and  the  building  in  it  is  clear  from  85,  13: 
earn  terrae  regionem  appellaverunt  loniam,  ibique  deorum 
immortalium  templa  constituentes  coeperunt  fana  aedificare, 
et  primum  Apollini  Panionio  aedem,  etc.;  similarly  13,  23 
and  84,  21,  in  both  of  which  templum  andfanum  are  used. 
For  this  sense  of  templum,  the  other  four  passages  are  30, 

25  ;  70,  ii ;  124,  27 ;   185,  5.     Five  times  the  word  denotes 
a  building  or  buildings,  but  in  only  one  of  them  is  a  dis- 
tinct building  specified, —  161,  13,  where  templum  refers 
to  the  temple  at  Eleusis.     The  others  are  76,  17;  96,  9 ; 
99,  23;    122,  21.     Finally  he  has  the  word  in  the  meta- 
phorical phrase  ad  summtim  templum  architecture,  '  to  the 
heights  of  the  holy  ground  of  architecture '  (7,  20). 

The  word  aedes  is  naturally  far  commoner  in  Vitruvius 
than  either  famim  or  templum.  It  is  used  of  temple  build- 
ings always,1  as  is  proper  (Thesaurus,  s.v.,  p.  911,  61),  not 
of  the  consecrated  space.  In  the  singular  we  have  it  thus 
32  times;  in  the  plural  17  times  without  a  modifier,  and 

26  times  with  sacrae.     Besides  these  he  applies  it  to  a 
score  of  definite  temples,  both  Greek  and  Roman.     The 
Roman  temples  are  the  Marian  temple  of  Honor  and  Vir- 
tus (69,  19;   161,  21),  and  the  temples  of  Quirinus  (70,  4), 
Apollo  and  Diana  (71,  13),  Luna  (116,  21),  Flora  (179,  12), 
Jupiter  and  Faunus  on  the  Island  (69,  n);  and  in  Colonia 
lulia  Fanestris  the  temples  of  Jupiter  (107,  4)  and  of  Au- 
gustus (107,  3),  if  Augusti  be  the  correct  reading.     To 
some  of  these  temples  the  technical  word  templum  might 

1  Except  once  (145,  19)  where  the  context  makes  it  perfectly  clear  that 
aedibus  means  dwelling  houses.  This  should  have  been  quoted  in  the  The- 
saurus, p.  908,  82  ff.,  among  the  rare  examples  of  the  plural  aedes,  meaning 
more  than  one  house.  Vitruvius  also  has  cava  aedium  three  times. 


232  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

no  doubt  have  been  correctly  applied,  for  instance,  to  the 
first  two  in  the  list.  But  we  must  remember  that  aedes 
was  the  general  term  for  all  buildings  devoted  to  the  gods 
(Marquardt,  Staatsverw?  iii,  p.  154),  and  that  while  Cicero 
uses  templum  of  the  temple  of  Quirinus  (Legg.  I,  3),  Au- 
gustus has  aedem  Quirini  in  his  Res  Gestae,  4,  6.  In  that 
work  it  has  been  observed  that  he  never  uses  templum  of 
any  definite  Roman  divinity  except  in  the  cases  of  Apollo 
Palatinus  and  Mars  Ultor  (see  Jordan,  cited  above,  p.  229, 
and  Mommsen,  Res  G.,  p.  78). 

The  words  fanum,  templum,  and  aedes,  therefore,  are 
used  by  Vitruvius  in  a  manner  perfectly  in  accord  with 
that  of  the  Augustan  age. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS1 

THAT  the  Latin  treatise  on  architecture,  extant  under  the 
name  of  Vitruvius  in  manuscripts  of  the  ninth,  tenth, 
eleventh,  twelfth,  and  fifteenth  centuries,  is  a  genuine  work, 
and  that  it  was  first  published  in  the  earlier  half  of  the 
Augustan  age,2  are  two  propositions  which  ought  no  longer 
to  be  doubted.  The  theory  that  it  is  a  forgery  of  the  third, 
fourth,  or  even  of  a  later  century  —  a  theory  propounded 
originally  by  Schultz3  and  supported  much  later  by 
Ussing  4  —  has  never  been  seriously  entertained  by  many 
scholars,  and  it  has  been  recently  refuted  on  the  grounds 
both  of  subject-matter  6  and  of  language.6  The  ascription 
of  the  work  to  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Titus  is  a  much 
older  idea.  Suggested  at  first,  apparently,  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,7  it  was  discussed  but  rejected  by  the  Span- 

1  From  the  Proceedings  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences, 
1909,  xliv,  149-175. 

2  Cf.  Degering,  Berl.  Phil  Woch.,  1907,  xxvii,  1292  ff.    After  the  printing 
of  this  article  had  begun,  I  received  L.  Southerner's  dissertation,  Vitruvius 
und  seine  Zeit,  Tubingen,  1908.     I  have  added  a  few  remarks  upon  it  in  foot- 
notes on  pages  238,  244,  and  269. 

8  First  in  his  letter  to  Goethe  in  1829,  published  in  Rhein.  Mus.,  1836,  iv, 
329;  reprinted  by  his  son,  together  with  a  much  longer  argument,  in  Unter- 
suchung  iiber  das  Zeitalter  des  .  .  .  Vitruvius,  Leipzig,  1856. 

4  In  Danish  in  1896;  more  fully  in  English:    Observations  on  Vitruvius, 
published  in  London  by  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects,  in  1898. 

5  See  especially  Degering,  Rhein.  Mus.,  1902,  Ivii,  8  ff.;  Krohn,  Berl.  Phil. 
Woch.,  1897,  xvii»  773  ff-5  and  Schmidt,  Bursian's  Jahresbericht,  1901,  cviii, 
iiSff. 

«  Hey  in  Archiv  f.  Lat.  Lex.,  1907,  xv,  287  ff. ;   Degering,  Berl.  Phil. 
Woch.,  1907,  xxvii,  1566  ff.;  Nohl,  Woch.  Kl.  Phil.,  1906,  xxiii,  1252  ff. 
7  See  Perrault's  Vitruve,  ed.  1673,  note  to  Vitr.  I,  pr.  I. 

233 


234  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

ish  translator  Ortiz;1  it  was  supported  by  the  English 
translator  Newton2  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth, 
and  it  has  been  revived  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century  in  a  series  of  learned  articles  by  M.  Victor  Mortet.3 
But  what  Degering  has  said4  of  the  arguments  of  the 
last  of  these  scholars  applies  equally  well  to  the  arguments 
of  them  all ;  many,  taken  by  themselves,  may  show  that 
our  Vitruvius  might  possibly  have  been  written  in  the 
Flavian  period,  but  not  one  of  them  shows  that  it  must 
have  been  written  at  that  time,  and  none  of  them  show 
that  it  could  not  have  been  written  in  the  Augustan  age. 

On  the  other  hand,  strong  evidence  is  not  wanting  that 
this  work  was  produced  early  in  the  Augustan  age,  and 
that  it  could  not  have  been  produced  later.  Some  of  this 
evidence  I  have  myself  offered ; 6  more  is  to  be  found  in 
the  writers  whom  I  have  already  cited ;  and  some  new 
evidence  I  may  present  upon  another  occasion. 

But  in  spite  of  it  all,  the  preface  which  stands  at  the 
very  opening  of  the  work  seems  at  first  thought  to  contain 
words  and  ideas  which  belong  only  to  a  time  when  the 
Roman  Empire  had  been  established  for  a  considerable 

1  Madrid,  1787,  preface. 

2  London,  1791,  Vol.  i,  p.  ix. 

8  Rev.  Archeologique,  Ser.  iii,  1902,  xli,  39  ff. ;  Ser.  iv,  1904,  iii,  222  ff., 
382  ff.;  iv,  265  ff.;  1906,  v,  268  ff.;  1907,  ix,  75  ff.;  x,  277  ff.;  1908,  xi,  101  ff. 
These  articles  contain  much  useful  material  for  the  study  of  Vitruvius. 

*  Berl.  Phil.  Wock.,  ibid.  1468. 

6  See  above,  pp.  225  ff.  But  M.  Mortet  {Rev,  Phil.,  1906,  xxxi,  66)  has 
rightly  observed  that  nothing  can  be  proved  from  Vitr.  243,  18,  which  I  had 
formerly  quoted  as  evidence  that  Vitruvius  could  not  have  written  after  22  B.C. 
For  we  do  not  know  that  Vitruvius  was  speaking  only  of  the  city  of  Rome  in 
this  passage.  In  the  municipalities,  aediles  continued  to  serve  as  curatorcs 
ludorum  long  after  praetors  superseded  them  in  Rome. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  235 

period  and  when  more  than  one  emperor  had  already 
occupied  the  throne.  In  translations  into  modern  lan- 
guages, as  well  as  in  such  commentaries  as  those  of  New- 
ton, Schultz,  Ussing,  and  Mortet,  these  words  and  ideas 
are  so  represented  or  expounded  that  the  difficulty  of 
applying  them  to  an  earlier  age  has  seemed  well-nigh  in- 
superable to  many  scholars,  and  not  merely  to  those  who 
are  approaching  the  critical  study  of  Vitruvius  for  the  first 
time.  If,  however,  we  are  convinced  that  the  earlier  part 
of  the  Augustan  age  is  a  date  which  suits  the  rest  of  the 
work,  it  is  obvious  that  this  difficulty  cannot  be  insuperable. 
To  solve  it  we  must  rid  ourselves  of  all  those  shades  of 
meaning  in  language  and  all  those  novelties  of  thought 
which  were  imperial  growths,  and  we  must  ask  ourselves 
at  every  point  whether  the  words  and  ideas  in  question  are 
such  as  might  well  have  been  used  by  one  who  was 
brought  up  under  the  Republic  and  who  wrote  soon  after 
its  fall.  If  they  are  such,  we  must  explain  and  translate 
them  accordingly,  and  so  the  difficulty  will  disappear.  In 
the  present  article,  therefore,  I  propose  to  comment  upon 
the  preface  line  by  line,  and  then  to  give  an  English  trans- 
lation of  it.  Having  been  engaged  during  the  past  six 
or  seven  years  upon  a  translation  (still  unfinished)  of  the 
whole  of  Vitruvius,  I  have  often  had  occasion  to  think 
of  the  points  in  question,  and  so  perhaps  I  am  not  un- 
qualified to  deal  with  them.  At  the  same  time  I  am  sub- 
mitting a  specimen  of  my  methods  to  the  criticism  of 
scholars,  for  I  do  not  intend  to  be  so  diffuse  in  my  com- 
mentary when  I  come  to  publish  my  translation. 

For  the  convenience  of  readers  of  this  article,  I  begin 
by  printing  the   Latin  text   from  Rose's  second  edition, 


236  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

setting  in  the  margin  the  page  and  line  of  his  first  edition, 
to  which  commentaries  always  now  refer. 

TEXT 

Cum  divina  tua  mens  et  numen,  imperator  Caesar,  im-p.i,i 
perio  potiretur  orbis  terrarum  invictaque  virtute  cunctis  ho- 
stibus  stratis,  triumpho  victoriaque  tua  cives  gloriarentur  et 
gentes  omnes  subactae  tuum  spectarent  nutum  populusque 
Romanus  et  senatus  liberatus  timore  amplissimis  tuis  cogi-        5 
tationibus  consiliisque  gubernaretur,  non  audebam,  tantis  oc- 
cupationibus,  de  architectura  scripta  et  magnis  cogitationibus 
explicata  edere,  metuens  ne  non  apto  tempore  interpellans 
subirem  tui  animi  offensionem.    cum  vero  attenderem  te  non 
solum  de  vita  communi  omnium  curam  publicaeque  rei  con-      10 
stitutione  habere  sed  etiam  de  opportunitate  publicorum  aedi- 
hciorum,  ut  civitas  per  te  non  solum  provinciis  esset  aucta, 
verum  etiam  ut   maiestas  imperii  publicorum  aedificiorum 
egregias  haberet  auctoritates,  non  putavi  praetermittendum 
quin  primo  quoque  tempore  de  his  rebus  ea  tibi  ederem.   ideo       15 
quod  primum  parenti  tuo  de  eo  fueram  notus  et  eius  virtutis 
studiosus.     cum  autem  concilium  caelestium  in  sedibus  in- 

P.  2,  i  mortalitatis  eum  dedicavisset  et  imperium  parentis  in  tuam 
potestatem  transtulisset,  idem  studium  meum  in  eius  memoria 
permanens  in  te  contulit  favorem.  itaque  cum  M.  Aurelio 
et  P.  Minidio  et  Gn.  Cornelio  ad  apparationem  ballistarum 

5  et  scorpionum  reliquorumque  tormentorum  refectionem  fui 
praesto  et  cum  eis  commoda  accepi.  quae  cum  primo  mihi 
tribuisti,  recognitionem  per  sororis  commendationem  servasti. 
cum  ergo  eo  beneficio  essem  obligatus  ut  ad  exitum  vitae 
non  haberem  inopiae  timorem,  haec  tibi  scribere  coepi  quod 

10  animadverti  multa  te  aedificavisse  et  nunc  aedificare,  reliquo 
quoque  tempore  et  publicorum  et  privatorum  aedificiorum  pro 
amplitudine  rerum  gestarum  ut  posteris  memoriae  tradantur 
curam  habiturum.  conscripsi  praescriptiones  terminatas,  ut 
eas  attendens  et  ante  facta  et  futura  qualia  sint  opera  per 

15  te  posses  nota  habere.  namque  his  voluminibus  aperui  omnes 
disciplinae  rationes. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  237 

COMMENTARY 

I.  divina  tua  mens  et  numen:  'your  divine  intelligence 
and  will.'  It  may  be  asked  whether  a  writer  of  the  earlier 
Augustan  period  would  speak  of  or  to  the  ruler  in  such 
language.1  But  the  use  of  the  adjective  divinus  and  the 
substantive  numen  does  not  necessarily  convey  imperial 
ideas  of  deification  or  of  the  '  divinity  that  doth  hedge  a 
king.'  In  fact  both  words  are  applied  to  living  Romans 
in  republican  Latin.  Thus  Cicero,  speaking  to  Julius 
Caesar  face  to  face,  used  the  phrase  tua  divina  virtus 
{Marc.  26) ;  of  Pompey  he  has  homo  divina  quadam  mente 
(Mil.  21),  and  Pompei  divino  consilio  (Imp.  P.  10);  he 
speaks  of  the  ancestors  of  the  Romans  as  homines  divina 
mente  et  consilio  praeditos  (L.  A.  2.  90),  and  calls  Marius 
and  Africanus  each  a  divinum  hominem  (Sest.  50;  Arch. 
16;  Mur.  75).  They  were  then  dead,  but  to  the  living 
Octavian  he  was  still  more  complimentary :  cf.  Phil.  5,  43, 
hunc  divinum  adulescentem ;  13,  19,  Caesaris  incredibilis 
ac  divina  virtus ;  5,  23,  C.  Caesar  divina  animi  magni- 
tudine ;  3,  3,  adulescens,  paene  potius  puer,  incredibili  ac 
divina  quadam  mente  atque  virtute.  And  he  does  not 
withhold  the  adjective,  with  a  celestial  addition,  from  the 
men  of  certain  legions  when  he  says  caelestis  divinasque 
legiones  (Phil.  5,  28).  As  for  numen,  that  it  does  not  nec- 
essarily imply  actual  deification  or  imperial  ideas  is  clear 
from  Cicero  again,  as  where  he  is  speaking  to  the  Roman 
people :  numen  vestrum  aeque  mihi  grave  et  sanctum  ac 

1  See  Wolfflin  in  Arckw  fur  Lat.  Lex.,  1896,  x,  301,  where  in  comment- 
ing on  Ussing's  first  article  he  says :  "  Beispielsweise  muss  man  zu  bestimmen 
suchen  ob  der  Vf.,  wenn  er  unter  Augustus  lebte,  den  Kaiser  in  der  Vorrede 
anreden  konnte  mit  den  Worter  divina  tua  mens  et  numen. 


238  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

deorum  immortalium  in  omni  vita  futurum  (Post  Red.  1 8, 
cf.  25,  cum  vobis  qui  apud  me  deorum  immortalium  vim 
et  numen  tenetis);  and  similarly  Phil.  3,  32,  magna  vis 
est,  magnum  numen  unum  et  idem  sentientis  senatus.  In 
these  passages  numen  implies  no  more  than  in  Lucretius, 
3,  144,  cetera  par  animae  .  .  .  ad  numen  mentis  mom enque 
movetur.  It  means  no  more  than  'will,'  although  it  is  a 
very  strong  word  to  use  in  that  sense;  cf.  Paul.  Fest.  172, 
numen  quasi  nutus  dei  ac potestas.  In  view  of  all  this  a  writer 
of  the  earlier  part  of  the  Augustan  age  may  well  have  applied 
divina  mens  et  numen  to  the  all-powerful  ruler,  and  we  need 
not  here  raise  the  question  whether  he  was  already  receiving 
divine  worship.  In  another  passage  (233,  4)  Vitruvius 
uses  the  phrase  divina  mens  of  the  intelligence  of  learned 
men  who  could  predict  changes  in  the  weather  ;  he  has  it 
also  four  times  referring  to  "divine  Providence  "  (138,  10; 
184,  17;  218,  19;  231,  1 8);  and  the  adjective  divinus  is 
applied  to  qualities  of  the  gods  in  two  other  places  (185,  7; 
245,  6).  He  does  not  use  the  word  numen  except  in  our 
passage. 

imperator  Caesar:  Here  two  questions  come  up  for  con- 
sideration :  (i)  whether  Augustus,  after  he  had  received 
that  name,  was  addressed  by  any  other ;  (2)  whether  there 
is  any  English  word  by  which  imperator  in  this  passage 
can  be  properly  translated.  As  for  the  first  question,  it 
is  generally  believed  that  Vitruvius  was  aware  that  the 
name  Augustus1  had  been  bestowed,  and  this  leads 

1  This  belief  rests  on  the  usual  interpretation  of  107,  3,  pronai  aedis  Au- 
gusti,  where  the  name  seems  to  be  recognized.  But  Sontheimer  (see  above, 
note  i)  holds  that  we  have  here  merely  the  adjective  augusti  agreeing  with 
pronai,  and  that  consequently  the  phrase  means  something  like  '  a  majestic 


THE   PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS 


239 


Ussing l  to  assert  that  an  inferior  like  Vitruvius  could  not 
have  avoided  addressing  him  by  that  name.  To  this  it  might 
be  rejoined  that  perhaps  the  use  of  the  name  did  not  at  once 
become  common,  and  that  the  absence  of  it  here  in  Vitru- 
vius points  to  a  date  soon  after  the  name  was  conferred  in 
27  B.  c.  But  we  need  not  have  recourse  to  this  argument; 
for  what  are  the  facts  about  the  use  of  this  name  by  per- 
sons who  were  speaking  or  writing  to  Augustus  and  em- 
ploying, as  Vitruvius  does,  the  vocative  case  ?  The  answer 
is  that  we  know  very  little  about  the  matter,2  for  we  have 
very  little  evidence  upon  which  to  base  a  conclusion.  We 
know  that  Valerius  Messala  once  addressed  him  in  the 

temple-pro naos.'  He  thinks  that  there  was  no  'temple'  built  at  the  rear 
of  this  pronaos,  but  that  the  structure  consisted  of  a  pronaos  only,  containing 
the  tribunal.  This  theory  is  attractive,  but  I  have  not  yet  had  time  fully  to 
weigh  it.  Some  objections,  which  may  not  be  insuperable,  readily  suggest 
themselves.  But  in  this  article  I  need  only  say  that  the  disappearance  of  the 
name  Angusti  would  strengthen  my  arguments  in  support  of  this  preface  as 
an  early  production.  As  for  the  reading  angusti,  found  in  cod.  S  (in  general, 
as  Degering,  Berl.  Phil.  Woch.,  1900,  xx,  9  ff.,  has  shown,  of  the  same  inde- 
pendent value  as  H  and  G),  I  cannot  accept  this  reading  in  spite  of  Krohn's 
remarks  in  Berl.  Phil.  Woch.t  l897,xvii,  781.  It  is  improbable  that  Vitruvius 
should  have  spoken  of  a  temple  here  without  naming  the  divinity  to  whom  it 
was  dedicated.  Cod.  H,  which  I  have  seen,  and  Cod.  G,  of  which  I  have  a 
photograph  of  this  page,  both  have  augusti.  Cod.  E  does  not  contain  the 
passage.  The  reading  angusti  is,  however,  found  in  several  of  the  late  manu- 
scripts. In  Florence  I  have  seen  it  in  Codd.  Laur.,  30,  II ;  12;  13;  also  in 
Cod.  XVII,  5,  of  the  Bibl.  Naz.  Centrale  (though  here  the  corrector  gives 
augusti) ;  and  in  Venice  in  Cod.  Marc.  CCCCLXIII.  Of  these  five  manu- 
scripts, the  first  three  belong  to  the  class  of  H  (lacuna  in  2,  18)  and  the 
other  two  to  the  class  of  G  and  S.  On  the  other  hand,  Cod.  Laur.  30,  10, 
which  Degering  (ibid.)  says  comes  directly  from  S,  has  augusti.  It  does 
indeed  belong  to  the  class  of  G  and  S.  In  Rome  I  observed  that  Cod.  Urb. 
293  and  also  the  Vallicellanus  (both  of  the  G  and  S  class)  have  augusti. 

1  Observations,  p.  IO. 

2  It  has  been  briefly  treated  by  Friedlander,  S.-G.,  II,  557  (sixth  edition), 
but  he  does  not  include  Ovid  and  Propertius  in  his  examination. 


240  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

Senate  with  the  words  Caesar  Auguste  (Suet.  Aug.  58). 
We  find  Auguste  once  in  Horace  in  a  formal  public  ode  (4, 
14,  3),  but  Caesar  in  an  ode  equally  formal  and  public,  and 
published  at  the  same  time  as  the  other  (4,  15,  4).  In 
view  of  this,  what  is  to  be  thought  of  Ussing's  contention 
that  in  one  of  his  Epistles  (2,  i,  4),  Horace  as  an  intimate 
friend  may  quite  suitably  use  Caesar,  his  family  name  ? 
If  we  turn  to  Propertius,  we  find  Anguste  twice  (3,  10,  15  ; 
5>  6,  38),  and  never  Caesar  in  the  vocative.  This  might 
seem  to  support  Ussing's  theory.  But  we  must  not  forget 
Ovid.  In  the  longest  poem  of  the  Tristia  he  has  Auguste 
once  (2,509),  but  Caesar  in  vocative  five  times  (27;  209; 
323  5  551  5  S^o).  He  uses  Auguste  in  only  one  other  pas- 
sage in  his  works  (M.  I,  204),  but  he  has  Caesar  in  the 
vocative  seven  times  besides  those  already  mentioned  in 
the  Tristia  (F.  2,  637;  Tr.  3,  i,  78;  5,  5,  61,  all  three  in 
prayers,  which  are  formal  things;  Tr.  4,  2,  47;  5,  n,  23; 
P.  2,  7,  67;  4,  9,  128).  This  is  all  the  evidence  that  I 
have  been  able  to  find.1  It  is  little  enough,  and  it  includes 
only  one  prose  example,  but  we  must  remember  how  small 
is  the  amount  of  Augustan  prose  that  has  survived  to  us. 
In  view  of  it  all,  we  are  not  entitled  to  criticise  Vitruvius 
for  using  Caesar  instead  of  Auguste.  Elsewhere  he  ad- 
dresses his  patron  six  times  with  the  vocative  Caesar  (n, 
i;  83,  18;  104,  22;  133,  6;  158,  8;  218,  13),  and  five 
times  with  the  vocative  imperator  ($2,  22;  64,  16;  83,  13; 
103,  i ;  243,  19).  In  our  preface  he  combines  the  two  in 
imperator  Caesar.  His  patron  had  been  an  imperator  ever 

1  It  may  be  interesting  to  note  that  Martial  addresses  the  reigning  em- 
peror of  his  day  as  Auguste  nine  times  and  as  Caesar  fifty-one  times;  ct. 
Friedlander's  edition,  ii,  index,  p.  371. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  241 

since  43  or  42  B.C.  (cf.  Cic.  Phil.  14,  28,  and  37 ;  OIL.  9, 
2142),  and  long  after  the  name  Augustus  was  given  to  him 
his  inscriptions  regularly  begin  with  the  words  imperator 
Caesar.  It  seems  perfectly  natural  that  he  should  be  ad- 
dressed in  this  way  by  one  who  had  served  in  the  army. 
But  can  the  word  imperator  as  thus  used  be  translated  into 
English?  I  think  not.  If  we  employ  'emperor,'  it 
carries  with  it  later  Roman  and  modern  ideas.  And  even 
if  it  did  not,  'emperor  Caesar'  in  the  vocative  is  not 
idiomatic  English.  Nobody  would  say  '  Emperor  William ' 
to  the  Kaiser,  though  we  use  the  phrase  when  we  -peak 
about  him.  The  word  'general'  sometimes  suits  an  im- 
perator of  the  republican  period,  but  by  no  means  always, 
since  its  scope  is  too  narrow.  And  to  print  'General 
Caesar '  here  would  certainly  be  an  absurdity.  The  word 
imperator,  therefore,  cannot  be  translated  here,  but  must 
be  transliterated  like  other  Roman  titles,  such  as  '  consul ' 
and  '  praetor.' 

2.  imperio  orbis  terrarum :  '  the  right  to  command  the 
world.'  There  is  nothing  necessarily  'imperial'  in  this 
expression,  anymore  than  in  Ad Herenn.  4,  13,  cited  below 
on  imperium  transtulisset  (2,  i);  cf.  Vitruvius,  138,  II, 
cited  below  on  potiretur.  And  the  word  imperium,  aside 
from  its  technical  sense  when  applied  to  a  high  military 
official  (cf.  Cic.  Phil.  5,  45,  demus  imperium  Caesari,  sine 
quo  res  militaris  administrari,  teneri  exercitus,  helium  geri 
non  potesf),  had  also  the  general  meaning  of  '  right  to  rule,' 
'supreme  power,'  from  Plautus  down.  Cf.  Plaut  Men. 
1030,  iubeo  hercle,  siquid  imperist  in  te  mihi:  Caes.  B.  G. 
7,  64,  8,  civitati  imperium  totius  provinciae  pollicetur;  Cic. 
Font.  12,  sub  populi  Romani  imperium  ceciderunt. 


242  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

potiretur:  'engaged  in  acquiring.'  This  is  a  true  im- 
perfect in  sense,  as  in  31,  7,  cum  Alexander  rerum  potire- 
tur, though  in  161,  13,  cum  Demetrius  Phalereus  Athenis 
rerum  potiretur,  it  has  no  doubt  a  completed  meaning. 
With  orbis  terrarum  imperium  it  occurs  also  in  138,  11, 
ita  divina  mens  cimtatem  populi  Romani  egregia  tempe- 
rataque  regionem  conlocavit,  uti  orbis  terrarum  imperii 
potiretur.  True  imperfects  are  also  gloriarentur  (line  3), 
spectarent  (4),  and  gubernaretur  (6)  in  our  preface,  like  the 
main  verb  audebam  (6).  For  such  imperfect  subjunctives 
combined  with  the  imperfect  indicative,  where  the  cum 
clause,  coincident  in  time,  is  circumstantial,  cf.  Vitr.  156, 
26;  250,  16;  251,  14  and  21;  283,9;  Cic.  D.N.  i,  59, 
Zenonem  cum  Athenis  ess  em  t  audiebam  frequenter ;  Fin. 
2,  6 1,  Decius  cum  se  devoveret,  .  .  .  cogitabatf  The  cir- 
cumstances to  which  Vitruvius  refers  are  of  course  the 
struggle  with  Caesar's  murderers,  and  then  with  Antony, 
ending  with  Actium,  the  conquest  of  Egypt,  the  days  of 
formal  triumphs  in  Rome,  and  the  beginning  of  the  rule 
of  Octavian  there.  This  passage  shows  that  Vitruvius's 
work  could  not  have  been  published  before  August  13-15 
(the  days  of  the  triple  triumph)  in  29  B.C. 

4.  tuum  spectarent  nutum:  'awaiting  your  nod,'  'your 
beck  and  call.'  Vitruvius  has  nutus  elsewhere  only  in  its 
literal  sense  (33,  22),  but  this  metaphorical  sense  is  com- 
mon enough  in  republican  writers ;  cf.  Cic.  Parad.  5,  39, 
quern  nutum  locupletis  orbi  senis  non  observat ;  Q.  F.  I,  I, 
22,  tot  urbes  tot  civitates  unius  hominis  nutum  intuentur. 
The  verb  specto,  though  common  in  Vitruvius,  is  found 
only  here  in  this  particular  sense,  but  it  may  be  paralleled 
from  Cicero;  cf.  Verr.  2,  33,  cum  iudex  .  .  .  voluntatem 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  243 

spectaret  ems,  etc. ;  Q.  F.  i,  i,  35,  non  legem  spectare  cen- 
soriam  ;  RA.  22,  omnes  in  unum  spectent. 

populusque  Romanus  et  senatus:  for  this  unusual  order 
cf.  Cic.  Fam.  15,  2,  4;  Sail.  Jug.  41,  2 ;  and  Weissenborn 
on  Liv.  7,  31,  10.  Vitruvius  has  elsewhere  the  usual  order 
(20,  17;  176,  17). 

5.  cogitationibus :  '  conceptions,'  so  in  Vitr.  34,  9 ;  103,  i ; 
161,  3 ;  216,  24.     Somewhat  similarly  '  ideas,'  31,  7  and  23 ; 
36,  9;  156,  i;  'notions,'  103,  20;  'devices,'  137,  12;  138, 
9;  other  shades  of  meaning  are  'consideration,'  215,  20; 
'reflection,'  i,  7;   12,4  and  5;  'deliberation,'  15,  2;  269, 
9;  'power  of  thought,'  36,  4;  132,  n;  and  in  the  phrase 
cogitatio  scripturae,  263,  9,  like   our  'thread  of  the  dis- 
course.'    On  Vitruvius's  use  of   the  plural  of  this  and 
other  abstracts  I  have  written  elsewhere.1 

6.  tantis  occupationibus :  'in  view  of  your  serious  em- 
ployments.'    The  phrase  may  be  either  an  ablative  abso- 
lute (so  with  Rose's  punctuation)  or   a   dat.  incommodi. 
With  most  commentators  I  take  occupationibus  as  referring 
to  Augustus,  though  Schneider  refers  it  to  Vitruvius. 

7.  de  architectural  scripta  et  magnis  cogitationibus  expli- 
cata :  '  my  writings  and  long-considered  ideas  on  architec- 
ture,' or  literally  '  things  written  and  set  forth  with  long 
reflection.'     For  cogitatio  in  this  sense,  cf.  12,  5,  cogitatio 
est  cura,  studii  plena  et  industriae  mgilantiaeque,  effectus 
propositi  cum  voluptate.     For  magnis,  '  great '  in  the  sense 
of  'much/  'long'  (not  'grand'  or  'important'),  cf.  214,  7, 
quod  magno  labore  fabri  normam  facientes  perducere  pos- 
sunt,  '  the  result  which  carpenters  reach  very  laboriously 
with  their  squares.'     This  is  like  the  vulgar  use  shown  in 

1  Language  of  Vitruvius,  see  above,  p.  168. 


244  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

Bell.  Hisp.  12,  magnum  tempus  consumpserunt ;  cf.  Justin, 
n,  10,  14,  magno  post  tempore  (see  Schmalz,  Antibarba- 
rus,  s.v.  magnus).  Somewhat  similar  are  magno  negotio  in 
Caes.  B.  G.  5,  n,  2  (cf.  Bell.  Alex.  8),  and  magna  industria, 
Sail.  Hist.  4,  2  M.  The  phrase  de  architectura  .  .  .  expli- 
cata  does  not  necessarily  signify  that  Vitruvius's  book  was 
finished  before  the  time  indicated  in  the  next  sentence,  and 
that  it  was  merely  slightly  revised  before  being  dedicated 
to  his  patron  and  published.1  If  there  is  any  particular 
force  beyond  the  natural  logic  of  the  Latin  language  to 
be  attached  to  the  perfect  tenses  of  scripta  and  explicata, 
Vitruvius  may  refer  merely  to  his  preliminary  collections 
and  studies,  and  perhaps  especially  to  what  he  elsewhere 
sometimes  calls  commentariiy  —  the  notes  and  abstracts 
made  by  himself  and  other  architects  in  the  course  of  their 
professional  studies;  cf.  3,  17,  litteras  architectum  scire 
oportet  uti  commentariis  memoriam  firmiorem  efficcre  pos- 
sit ;  132,  27,  philologis  et  philotechnis  rebus  commentario- 
rumque  scripturis  me  delectans.  With  regard  to  magnis 
cogitationibus ,  Ussing  and  Mortet2  are  troubled  because 
they  take  magnis  in  the  sense  of  '  grand '  or  '  lofty,'  and 
feel  that  Vitruvius  would  be  presumptuous  in  applying 
much  the  same  language  to  his  own  thoughts  and  to  those 
of  Augustus  (cf.  amplissimis  tuis  cogitationibus  just  above). 

1  This  is  the  theory  of  Krohn,  Berl.  Phil.    Woch.,  1897,  xvii,  773  f.,  and 
Dietrich,  Quaestionum  Vitr.   Specimen,  answered  by  Degering,  Berl.  Phil. 
Woch.,  1907,  xxvii,  1372.    Sontheimer  (see  above,  p.  233,  note  2)  revives  it  in  a 
somewhat  different  form,  holding  that  the  work  was  ready  in  32  B.C.,  but  that 
publication  was  delayed  until  some  time  between  August  of  the  year  29  and 
January  of  the  year  27,  when  it  was  published  with  the  addition  of  the  pref- 
aces to  the  various  books,  but  without  any  other  additions. 

2  Rev,  Arch.,  1902,  xli,  46. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  245 

Mortet  therefore  proposes  to  take  magnis  cogitationibus 
with  edere  in  the  same  construction  (presumably  dative) 
as  tantis  occupationibus,  and  he  translates  as  follows :  '  Je 
n'osais  pas  mettre  au  jour  pour  vous  mes  Merits  sur  1'archi- 
tecture  a  cause  de  vos  si  grandes  occupations,  ni  vous  sou- 
mettre  mes  commentaires  sur  cet  art,  alors  que  vous  avez 
de  grands  soucis  de  gouvernement.'  But  strange  as  Vitru- 
vius  may  often  be  in  his  methods  of  expressing  himself,  I 
know  of  no  other  passage  in  his  whole  work  that  is  so  dis- 
torted in  arrangement  as  this  one  would  be  if  we  accept 
the  explanation  of  Mortet,  who  indeed  does  not  pretend  to 
have  found  any  parallel  for  it.  His  other  explanation, 
that  perhaps  et  before  magnis  means  '  even,'  is  not  happier 
nor  is  either  explanation  necessary. 

10.  publicize  rei  constitutione :    'the    establishment   of 
public  order ' ;   cf .  Cic.  Marc.  27,  hie  restat  acfus,  in  hoc 
elaborandum  est,  ut  rem  publicam  constituas. 

11.  de  opportunitate  publicorum  aedificiorum :   'public 
buildings  intended  for  purposes  of  utility.'     Here  oppor- 
tunitate  must  be  interpreted  by  Vitruvius's  own  definition 
of  the  word  in  15,  9  ff.:  publicorum  autem  distributions 
sunt  ires,  e  quibus  est  una  defensionis,  altera  religionis, 
tertia  opportunitatis.   .    .    .   Opportunitatis  communium  lo- 
corum  ad  usum  publicum  dispositio,  uti  portus  fora  porticus 
balineae  theatra  inambulationes  ceteraque  quae  isdem  rationi- 
bus  in  publicis  locis  designantur,  that  is :  '  there  are  three 
classes   of   public   buildings,  the   first   for  defensive,  the 
second  for  religious  purposes,  and  the"  third  for  purposes 
of   utility.  .  .  .    Under  utility,  the  provision  of   meeting 
places  for  public  use,  such  as  harbors,  markets,  colonnades, 
baths,  theatres,  promenades,  and  all  other  similar  arrange- 


246  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

ments  in  public  places.'     With  this  compare  the  use  of  the 
same  word  in  128,  22,  and  134,  9. 

12.  utcivitas  .  .  .  auctoritates:  '  so  that  not  only  should 
the  State  have  been  enriched  with  provinces  by  your 
means,  but  that  the  greatness  of  its  power  might  likewise 
be  attended  with  distinguished  authority  in  its  public 
buildings.'  Here  civitas,  the  main  subject,  is  thrust  for- 
ward, and  maiestas  imperil,  'the  greatness  of  its  power,' 
refers  to  it.  This  phrase  does  not  mean  'the  majestic 
empire,'  nor  does  it  necessarily  convey  any  other  idea  in- 
consistent with  republican  times,  for  it  is  found  in  Cicero, 
R.  A,  131,  Sullam,  cum  solus  rem  publicam  gubernaret  im- 
perique  maiestatem  quam  armis  receperat,  iam  legibus  confer- 
maret.  For  another  example  of  maiestas  referring  literally 
to  size,  cf.  Vitr.  52,  18,  in  ea  autem  maiestate  urbis  et 
civium  infinita  frequentia. 

provinciis  esset  aucta :  If  strictly  interpreted,  the  com- 
pleted tense  esset  aucta  seems  to  show  that  the  provinces 
had  already  been  added,  while  the  following  haberet  may  in- 
dicate that  the  buildings  were  not  yet  finished.  Egypt  became 
a  province  in  30  B.C.,  and  Cyprus  in  27  B.C.,  while  Moesia 
was  at  least  an  administrative  district  as  early  as  29  B.C.1 

14.  auctoritates:  Here  Mortet2  has  this  note:  'Vitruve 
revient  a  plusieurs  reprises,  a  propos  d'6difices,  sur  ce  qu'il 
appelle  des  modeles  d'architecture,  auctoritas,  auctoritates 
aedificii,  c'est-a-dire  conformes  aux  regies  de  1'art  et  aux 
meilleures  traditions  architectoniques  (Voy.  1' Index  de 

1  On  all  these,  see  Marquardt,  Rom.  Staatsverw.?  i,  pp.  439,  391,  302. 
The  existence  of  Galatia  and  Pamphylia  as  provinces  cannot  be  certified  be- 
fore 25  B.C.  (Marquardt,  ibid.,  358,  375). 

3  Rev.  Arch.,  1902,  xli,  58,  n.  I. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS          247 

Nohl,  v°  auctoritas}:  That  is  to  say,  he  would  render 
publicorum  aedificiorum  egregias  auctoritates  by  some  such 
phrase  as  '  unsurpassed  models  of  public  buildings.'  J 
But  I  have  carefully  examined  all  the  occurrences  cited  in 
Nohl's  Index,  and  do  not  find  one  in  which  the  word 
means  'a  model'  or  'models.'  It  occurs  twenty  times 
besides  here.  In  nine,  it  is  applied  to  scholars  or  archi- 
tects or  to  their  writings,  and  it  signifies  their  '  influence ' 
or  'authority'  (2,  26;  3,  3;  n,  9;  62,  25;  63,  8;  103,  4 
and  5  ;  173,  19;  218,  12).  In  one,  it  refers  to  the  severe 
dignity  of  a  certain  kind  of  music  (in,  18).  In  the  other 
ten  passages  it  refers  to  buildings,  and  denotes  their  dignity 
or  imposing  effect  (e.g.,  72,  22,  conservavit  auctoritatem  to- 
tiusoperis,  and  cf.  12,  25  ;  72,  I ;  73,  I ;  81,  1 1 ;  107,  26 ;  154, 
17;  161,  15;  162,4;  I75»  5)-  So  Turnebus,  Advers.  1195, 
45,  explains  our  passage  by  '  dignitates  et  pulchritudines! 

non  putavi:  On  this  phrase  I  have  already  written  else- 
where.2 Schmalz,  in  a  private  letter  to  me,  compares  the 
Ciceronian  use  of  nego,  nolo,  veto  (Acad.  2,  121 ;  Mur.  59; 
Off-  i,  30),  where  the  negative  idea  does  not  really  belong 
to  the  main  verb. 

15.  de  his  rebus  ea:  'my  writings  on  this  theme.' 
Here  ea  refers  to  scrip ta  et  explicata  in  line  7,  though  the 
identity  should  not  be  too  closely  pressed ;  nor  should  his 
rebus  be  thought  of  as  referring  only  to  publicorum  aedifici- 
orum, since  it  includes  also  the  ideas  expressed  in  opportu- 
nitate  and  egregias  auctoritates.  Hence  it  must  be  rendered 
generally,  as  I  have  suggested  in  the  phrase  'this  theme.' 

1  Marini  in  his  note  to  the  passage  had  already  rendered  the  word  by 
exempla,  without  citing  any  parallels. 

8  Language  of  Vitruvius,  see  above,  p.  189. 


248  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

ideo  quod:  For  this  phrase  used  at  the  beginning  of  a 
sentence  like  a  particle  of  inference,  cf.  Vitr.  88,  21.  I  do 
not  know  any  other  exact  parallel. 

16.  parenti  tuo :  i.e.  Julius  Caesar,  here  and  two  lines 
below,  called  the  parens  of  the  person  to  whom  Vitruvius 
writes,  while  in  203,  13,  the  word  pater*-  is  used  of  him. 
But  nothing  is  to  be  argued  seriously  from  the  different 
words,2  since  fortunately  Augustus  himself  in  the  Monu- 
mentum  Ancyranum  calls  his  adoptive  father  both  parens 
(i,  10)  and  pater  (2,  24;  3,  7;  4,  14).  It  may  be  conven- 
ient to  assemble  here  the  other  passages  in  which  Vitruvius 
refers  to  Julius  Caesar.  There  are  two  of  them.  In  one 
he  calls  him  divus  Caesar (59,  18);  four  lines  further  im- 
perator  (59,  22),  and  a  little  below  simply  Caesar  (60,  4). 
In  that  passage  he  is  relating  an  anecdote  about  a  cam- 
paign in  the  Alps.  In  the  other  passage,  where  he  is 
giving  examples  of  pycnostyle  temples,  we  find  the  clause 
quemadmodum  est  divi  lulii  et  in  Caesaris  foro  Veneris  (70, 
1 8).  Both  these  passages,  therefore,  like  the  words  which 
follow  in  the  preface  which  we  are  studying,  show  that 
Vitruvius  wrote  after  the  deification  of  Julius,  which  took 
place  by  decree  not  long  after  his  death  (Plut.  Caes.  67; 
cf.  CIL.  i,  626;  9,  2628). 

1  Retaining,  as  I  think  we  must,  the  reading  patre  Caesare ;  so  Mortet, 
Rev.  Arch.,  1902,  xli,  69;  Degering,  Berl.  Phil.  Woch.,  1907,  xxvii,  1468, 
instead  of  Rose's  emendation  patre  Caesari.  The  word  patre  is  inserted  here 
by  Vitruvius  for  fear  that  readers  should  think  he  meant  the  living  Caesar 
(Augustus) ;  so  Cicero,  Phil.,  5,  49,  utinam  C.  Caesari,  patri  dico,  contigisset, 
etc.;  ibid.  39,  Pompeio  enim  patre. 

2 Though  Degering  (I.e.),  arguing  against  Mortet's  hypothesis,  suggests 
that  parens  is  a  more  appropriate  term  for  the  adoptive  father  and  uncle  of 
Augustus  than  for  the  actual  father  of  Titus. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS          249 

de  eo :  The  singular  eo  is  used  rather  loosely  here  after 
ea  and  his  rebus,  but '  that  thing '  can  mean  nothing  except 
architecture,  so  that  there  is  no  danger  of  confusion  here 
any  more  than  in  Cic.  Att.  9,  10,  10,  perlegi  omnes  tuas  (lit- 
teras)  et  in  eo  acquievi.  As  for  the  use  of  causal  de, 
I  have  defended  it  against  Ussing's  strictures  in  another 
place.1 

fueram  notus:  On  this  use  of  fueram  with  the  pf.  partc., 
see  Landgraf,  Hist.  Gramm.,  Heft  i,  220  ff.,  who  says  that 
it  is  found  ten  times  in  Vitruvius  against  seven  occurrences 
of  the  regular  formation  with  eram. 

eius  virtutis  studiosus :  This  awkwardness  of  the  de- 
pendence of  one  genitive  (eius}  upon  another  (virtutis)  is 
found  elsewhere  in  Vitruvius :  cf.  a  leone  transiens  in  vir- 
ginem  progrediensque  ad  sinum  vestis  eius  (227,  9);  timore 
eorumfortitudiniseffectus,  'for  fear  of  the  effect  of  their 
courage '  (three  genitives  !  5,  7).  The  expression  'devoted 
to  his  virtus,'  though  logically  correct  in  Latin,  means  in 
idiomatic  English,  '  devoted  to  him  on  account  of  his  virtus? 
and  in  this  way  I  have  rendered  it.  In  cod.  S,  cod.  Es- 
tensis,2  and  in  eight  codd.  of  Marini,  as  well  as  in  the 
Venetian  edition  of  1497,  the  word  erat  stands  between 
virtutis  and  studiosus.  If  this  meant  anything,  it  would 
mean  that  Julius  Caesar  '  was  interested  in  the  excellence 
of  architecture '  (eius  referring  to  eo,  and  cf.  64,  15,  nostrae 
scientiae  virtu  tern}.  But  studiosus  is  resumed  just  below 
(2,  2)  by  idem  studium  meum,  so  that  the  reading  erat 
hardly  deserves  further  attention.  The  word  virtutis  in 
this  clause  is  not  to  be  confined  to  military  valor  (as  in  i, 

^Language  of  Vitruvius,  see  above,  p.  187. 
2  See  Sola,  Riv.  d.  Bibliottche,  1900,  xi,  35  ff. 


250  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

2),  nor  to  moral  worth,  but  is  used  in  a  much  more  general 
sense;  hence  I  have  rendered  it  by  'great  qualities.' 

17.  concilium  caelestium:  cf.  Cic.  Off.  3,  25,  Herculem 
quern  hominum  fama  in  concilia  caelestium  collocavit.  But 
as  Schneider  notes :  '  satis  dextre  adulatur  Octaviano  Vitru- 
vius,  dum  patrem  non  a  Romanis  inter  deorum  numerum 
relatum,  sed  ab  ipso  deorum  concilio  allectum  et  dedicatum 
fuisse  ait.'  Vitruvius  uses  caelestes  as  a  substantive  again 
in  102,  22;  cf.  Cic.  Phil.  4,  10. 

Page  2,  I.  imperium  parentis  in  tuam  potestatem  trans- 
tulisset:  'transferred  your  father's  power  to  your  hands.' 
Here  Mortet 1  has  this  observation :  '  La  maniere  dont 
Vitruve  parle  de  la  translation  de  la  dignite  imperiale  ap- 
pelle  aussi  une  remarque  qui  n'est  pas  sans  interet  Ce 
n'est  pas  a  Auguste,  pensons-nous  avec  W.  Newton,  que 
Vitruve  aurait  parld  d'une  translation  r6guliere  de  1'empire. 
Le  langage  de  1'auteur  de  la  Preface  s'applique  a  une 
^poque  ou  Ton  6tait  deja  habitu6  a  des  changements 
r^guliers  dans  la  premiere  fonction  de  1'Etat:  Auguste  ne 
1'aurait  point  toleYe"  pour  des  raisons  politiques  qu'il  est 
facile  de  comprendre.'  But  it  is  a  pure  assumption  that 
Vitruvius  is  speaking  of  '  a  regular  transmission  of  the  em- 
pire,' and  the  very  use  of  the  word  '  empire '  in  this  con- 
nection is  a  part  of  the  difficulty  created,  as  I  have 
suggested  above,  by  modern  commentators,  and  not  really 
existing  in  the  Latin  of  Vitruvius.  I  have  already  pointed 
out  (in  my  note  on  I,  2)  the  republican  meaning  of  impe- 
rium. Julius  Caesar  had  imperium,  and  we  know  that 
Octavian  received  it  in  43  or  42  B.C.  (see  on  i,  i).  The 
language  of  our  preface  is  therefore  no  more  '  imperial ' 

1  Rev.  Arch.,  1902,  xli,  47. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  2$  I 

than  is  the  language  of  the  unknown  republican  orator  in 
Ad  Herennium,  4,  13;  imperium  orbis  terrae  .  .  .  ad  se 
transferre ;  cf.  Caes.  B.  G.  7,  63,  5,  ut  ipsis  summa  imperi 
transdatur.  The  verb  transfero  was  the  regular  one  to  use 
of  transfers  of  power ;  cf.  Cic.  L.  A.  2,  54,  earum  rerum 
omnium  potestatem  ad  decemviros  esse  trans latam  ;  Mur.  2, 
cum  omnis  deorum  immortalium  potestas  aut  translata  sit 
ad  vos  ;  and  Mon.  Ancyr.  6,  15,  rempublicam  ex  mea  potes- 
tate  in  senatus  populique  Romani  arbitrium  transtuli. 
When  we  get  down  to  Tacitus  we  do  indeed  find :  suscepere 
duo  manipulares  imperium  populi  Romani  transferendum, 
et  trans tulerunt  (H.  i,  25).  But  there  was  nothing  '  regu- 
lar '  in  this  transfer  ! 

2.  idem  studium  meum  in  eius  memoria  permanens: 
We  should  not  separate  these  words  as  does  Mortet,1  who 
punctuates  thus:  idem  studium  meum,  in  eius  memoria , 
permanens  in  te,  contulit  favorem,  and  translates,  '  Le 
meme  zele  que  j'avais  de  sons  temps,  subsistant  envers 
vous,  m'a  apport6  votre  faveur.'  He  compares  63,  12, 
aeterna  memoria  ad  posteritatem  sunt  permanentes.  But 
I  believe  that  the  idea  which  Vitruvius  was  struggling  to 
express  was  this :  '  While  Caesar  was  among  us,  I  was 
devoted  to  his  person ;  now  that  he  is  gone,  my  devotion 
continuing  unchanged  as  I  remembered  him,'  etc.  He 
expresses  it  obscurely,  but  for  a  somewhat  similar  use  of 
in  memoria,  cf.  Cic.  Aft.  9,  1 1  A,  3,  pius  .  .  .  in  maximi 
beneficii  memoria,  '  loyal  as  I  remember  my  extreme  obli- 
gation ' ;  and  for  the  mere  syntax  of  permanens  with  in 
and  the  ablative,  cf.  for  instance  Cic.  Fam.  5,  2,  10,  ut  in 
mea  erga  te  voluntate  permanerem,  and  Quint.  3,  4,  4,  mihi 

1  Rev.  Arch.,  1902,  xli,  49. 


2$2  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

in  ilia  vetere  persuasione  permanenti.  Ussing1  renders 
the  phrase  thus :  '  this  ardor  of  mine  in  clinging  to  his 
memory ' ;  but  even  if  in  memoria  is  really  Latin  in 
this  sense  (which  may  be  doubted),  it  is  surely  not  in 
accordance  with  the  usage  of  Vitruvius.  He  has  the 
word  memoiia  sixteen  times  besides  here.  In  six  passages 
it  denotes  literally  the  faculty  of  memory  (3,  18;  7,  23  ;  10, 
10 ;  103,  22;  104,  ii ;  157,  12).  In  five,  it  refers  to  the 
future,  —  to  the  record  which  one  is  to  leave  for  pos- 
terity, as  in  the  phrase  posteris  memotiae  tradi  (cf.  2,  12 ; 
4,  22;  63,  12;  155,  ii  and  19).  Once  it  means  'fame' 
(63,  1 8);  twice  we  have  the  common  nostra  memoria,  'in 
our  time*  (162,  7;  251,  3),  and  once  post  nostra  memo- 
riam  (218,  4).2  Finally  there  is  a  peculiar  usage  of  the 
plural,  probably  in  the  sense  of  '  history  '  (217,  20).  It  is 
obvious  that  the  idea  of  '  remembering '  and  of  '  memory ' 
in  the  literal  sense  is  the  prevalent  meaning  in  Vitruvius, 
and  so  I  have  taken  it  in  our  passage. 

3.  in  te  contulit  favorem:  Schneider  has  this  note : 
*  displicet  in  sermone  Vitruvii  favor,  quern  is  transtulit  ad 
filium,  cum  potius  ex  nostrorum  hominum  sensu  petere  ab 
Octaviano  deberet,  ut  is  in  memoria  patris  permanens  ad 
Vitruvium  favorem  transferret.'  And  Ussing3  translates : 
'  This  ardor  of  mine  has  transferred  its  favor  to  thee,'  and 
then  he  remarks  upon  the  idea  as  'coarse  and  out  of  taste.' 
These  criticisms  seem  based  upon  a  mistaken  notion  of  the 
meaning  of  the  Latin  word  favor.  It  is  not  at  all  a  com- 

1  Observations,  p.  9. 

2  These  last  three  occurrences  really  afford  no  support  to  Mortet's  strange 
interpretation  of  in  eius  memoria. 

3  Observations,  pp.  9  f. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS          253 

mon  word,  particularly  in  republican  Latin.  It  is  not 
found  in  Ennius,  Plautus,  Terence,  Caesar,  or  Nepos. 
Cooper1  speaks  of  it  as  one  of  the  seven  substantives  in 
-or  that  are  found  in  Cicero  and  not  in  earlier  writers.  In 
its  meaning  it  is  very  restricted ;  indeed,  it  is  almost  tech- 
nical until  well  on  in  the  imperial  period,  and  the  English 
word  '  favor '  is  consequently  an  exceedingly  unfortunate 
one  to  employ  in  the  translation  of  it.  In  republican  and 
early  imperial  times  it  appears  to  be  confined  to  the  the- 
atrical and  political  spheres,  in  which  it  denotes  the 
'applause'  or  'support'  which  is  given  to  an  actor  or 
to  a  politician  by  his  well  wishers.  Cicero  uses  it  only 
four  times.  In  Rose.  Com.  29,  speaking  of  the  actor 
Panurgus,  he  says  :  quam  enim  spem  et  expectationem,  quod 
studium  et  quern  favorem  secum  in  scaenam  attulit  Panur- 
gus, quod  Rosci  fuit  discipulus.  Qui  diligebant  hunc,  illi 
favebant.  And  in  Sest.  115,  in  a  passage  where  he  is 
speaking  of  expressions  of  popular  opinion  at  theatrical 
or  other  shows,  we  find :  qui  rumore  et,  ut  ipsi  loquuntur, 
favore  populi  tenetur  et  ducitur.  Here  the  use  of  the  tech- 
nical term  favore  is  excused  by  ut  ipsi  loquuntur.  And 
similarly  in  the  very  significant  quotation  by  Quintilian 
(8,  3,  34)  from  a  lost  letter  of  Cicero's  we  have  'favorem ' 
et  ' urbanum'  Cicero  nova  credit.  Nam  et  in  epistula  ad 
Brutum  eum,  inquit  amorem  et  eum,  ut  hoc  verbo  utar, 
favorem  in  consilium  advocabo.  Obviously  Cicero  is  here 
transferring  the  theatrical  usage  of  the  word  to  the  politi- 
cal sphere.2  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  fourth  passage 

1  Word  Formation  in  tlie  Sermo  Plebeius,  25. 

2  See  Holden  in  his  edition  of  Pro  Sestio,  115,  where  he  gives  a  note  by 
Reid.     And  for  further  illustration,  cf.  Hor.  Ep.  2,  I,  9;  C.  4,  8,  26;  Verg.  A. 
5.  343- 


254  ADDRESSES  AND   ESSAYS 

in  which  he  employs  it,  Legg.  2,  n,  quae  (leges)  sunt  varie 
et  ad  tempus  discriptae  populis,  favore  magis  qtiam  re 
legum  nomen  tenent.  This  same  idea  is  found  in  the 
author  who  is  the  next  to  employ  the  word,  Sallust :  cf . 
J.  13,  7,  in  gratiam  et  favorem  nobilitatis;  J.  73,  4,  generis 
humilitas  favorem  addiderat  (said  of  Marius).  So  in  Livy, 
who  perhaps  has  the  word  only  once,  we  find  regimen 
totius  magistrates  penes  Appium  erat  favore  plebis  (3, 
33,  7).  And  finally  I  may  cite  Veil.  Pat.  2,  54,  2,  ingens 
partium  eius  (Pompei}  favor  bellum  excitaverat  Africa- 
num;  cf.  also  2,  43,  3;  89,  i;  92,4.  In  none  of  these 
authors  is  there  anything  like  the  condescending  tone 
which  is  often  implied  by  the  English  word  '  favor '  or  the 
German  '  Gunst,'  and  which  is  what  gives  offense  to 
Ussing  and  Schneider.  But  we  may  go  further  and 
observe  that  the  same  restricted  interpretation  will  usually 
hold  good  in  republican  Latin  for  the  related  words  fautor 
and  faveo.  The  theatrical  sense  of  fautor  (in  the  form 
favitor)  comes  out  very  clearly  three  times  in  the  prologue 
to  the  Amphitruo  of  Plautus  (67;  78;  79).1  It  denotes  a 
political  supporter  in  Cic.  Fam.  i,  9,  n,  cuius  (Pompei} 
dignitatis  ego  ab  adulescentia  fautor;  cf.  10,  12,  5>  -dtf. 
I,  1 6,  n.  In  the  orations  of  Cicero  it  occurs  nine  times 
in  this  sense:  e.g.  nobilitatis  fautor  (R.  A.  16);  fautores 
Antoni(Phil.  12,  2).  So  Sallust,  H.  3,  88  (M.),  Pompeius 
.  .  .  sermone  fautorum  similem  fore  se  ere  dens  Alexandro; 
cf.  J.  15,  2,  fautores  legatorum.  And  Livy  uses  it  in  the 
sense  of  'partisans'  in  i,  48,  2,  clamor  ab  utrisque  fau- 
toribus  oritur.  The  verb  faveo  occurs  earlier  than  either 

1  In  two  fragments  of  Lucilius  we  have  not  enough  of  the  context  to  assure 
us  of  the  exact  meaning  of  the  word.     But  see  Marx  on  frag.  269  f.,  and  cf.  902. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  255 

favor  or  fautor.  It  is  found  in  Naevius  (ap.  Non.  205, 
27),  but  here  we  have  not  context  enough  to  help  us  to  its 
meaning.  In  another  fragment  (ap.  Front.  Ep.  ii,  10,  p. 
33  Nab.),  which  begins  regum  filiis  linguis  faveant,  the 
verb  seems  already  to  convey  the  idea  of  'support.'  This 
comes  out  clearly  in  Ennius,  Ann.  291  (Vahlen),  Romanis 
luno  coepit  placata  favere;  and  the  theatrical  usage  seems 
to  me  to  appear  in  Ann.  419,  matronae  moeros  complent 
spectare  faventes.  In  Terence,  Eun.  916,  illi  faveo  virgini 
is  said  by  a  'supporter'  (though  not  political)  of  the 
maiden  in  question,  and  in  Andr.  Prol.  24,  favete,  adeste 
aequo  animo,  we  have  again  the  theatrical  meaning  of 
'applaud.'  But  when  we  reach  the  classical  period,  the 
political  meaning  is  very  prominent.  Caesar  uses  the  verb 
five  times,  and  always  in  this  sense:  e.g.  B.  C.  2,  18,  6, 
provinciam  omnem  Caesaris  rebus  favere  cognoverat  (cf. 
i,  7,  i;  i,  28,  i ;  B.  G.  6,  7,  7;  i,  18,  8).  See  also  Cicero, 
Fam.  12,  7,  i,  favebam  et  rei  publicae,  cui  semper  favi,  et 
dignitati  tuae  (cf.  10.  i,  3,  and  3,  2;  Att.  12,  49,  i).  And 
in  his  orations,  Cicero  employs  the  verb  some  twenty-five 
times  in  this  sense:1  e.g.  Sest.  21,  omnes  boni  semper 
nobilitati  favemus;  cf.  Plane.  18.  Sallust  uses  faveo  in 
the  political  sense  in  Cat.  1 7,  6,  iuventus  pleraque  Catilinae 
inceptis  favebant;  cf.  48,  i;  J.  85,  5.  Finally  I  may  cite 
Veil.  Pat.  2,  26,  2,  faventis  (ace.  pi.)  Sullae  partibus.  In 
view  of  all  this,  I  think  that  it  should  be  granted  that 
when  Vitruvius  uses  the  word  in  our  passage,3  he  is  think- 
ing of  this  technical  political  sense.  He  had  served  under 

1  In  the  theatrical  sense  he  employs  it  (as  well  as  the  substantive  favor) 
in  R.  C.,  29,  which  I  have  already  quoted  (p.  253). 
z  He  has  it  nowhere  else,  nor  faveo,  nor  fautor. 


256  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

Julius  Caesar  and  was  devoted  (studiosus)  to  him.  When 
Caesar  was  gone,  'my  devotion,  continuing  unchanged  as 
I  remembered  him  (idem  studium  meum  in  eius  memoria 
permanens),  bestowed  its  support  upon  you  (in  te  contulit 
favor  em)?  This  is  a  literal  translation  of  the  passage. 
Vitruvius  may  take  a  clumsy  way  of  saying  'inclined  me 
to  support  you,'  but  certainly  no  statesman  to-day  or  in 
antiquity  would  see  anything  coarse  or  out  of  taste  in  an 
author's  recalling  the  fact  that,  at  a  critical  period,  he  had 
lent  that  statesman  his  support.  And  this  interpretation 
of  the  passage  involves  no  distortion  of  the  plain  intent  of 
the  Latin;  for  the  construction  and  meaning  of  in  te  contu- 
lit favorem  is  illustrated  by  Cic.  Fam.  1 3,  50,  2,  in  me 
officia  et  studia  Brundisi  contulisti;  cf.  Att.  i,  i,  4;  Fam. 
10,  i,  3;  15,  2,  8.1  The  usage  of  Vitruvius  himself  offers 
us  no  exact  parallel,2  but  many  examples  similar  to  those 
which  I  have  cited  are  given  in  the  new  Thesaurus,  s.v. 
confero  (184,  30-72)  under  the  lemma  'beneficia  sim.  in 
aliquem  conferre.'8  There  is,  however,  an  entirely 

1Mortet,  Rev.  Arch.,  1902,  xli,  50,  has  this  note:  'La  vraie  forme 
classique  serait  ici  conciliavit  et  1'on  attendrait  mSme  plut8t  a  attulit  qu'a 
contulit?  But  the  difference  between  contulit  and  attulit  is  excellently  shown 
by  Cic.  Fam.  10,  5,  I,  itaque  commemoratio  tua  paternae  necessitudinis  bene- 
volentiaeque  eius  quam  erga  me  a  pueritia  contulisses,  ceterarumque  rerum 
.  .  .  incredibilem  mihi  laetitiam  attulerunt.  However,  Mortet  is  supporting 
a  different  translation  for  our  passage,  of  which  I  shall  speak  later  (p.  257). 

2  The  nearest  is  159,  12,  quibus  felicitas  maximum  summumque  coniulit 
munus,  where  we  have  the  dative  instead  of  in  and  the  accusative.     Else- 
where Vitruvius  has  the  verb  five  times  in  the  literal  sense  of '  bring  together' 
(33,5;  43,  10;    158,12;    168,  14;   280,  li);  once  meaning  'compare'  (157, 
13) ;  and  once  each  in  the  common  phrases  se  conferre  (105,  26)  and  sermonen 
conferre  (218,  7). 

3  Our  passage  is  not  included  here,  but  is  wrongly,  as  I  believe,  placed 
under  the  lemma  '  potestatem,  honores,  sim.  deferre'  (182,  30). 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  357 

different  interpretation  of  in  te  contulit  favorem  which 
should  be  mentioned  here,  although  I  consider  it  erro- 
neous. It  has  the  support  of  Newton,  Gwilt,  Reber,  and 
Mortet.  Newton  translates:  'procured  me  thy  favor'; 
Gwilt:  'has  been  the  cause  of  your  goodwill  towards  me'; 
Reber:  'mir  auch  Deine  Gunst  erworben  hat';  Mortet: 
'm'apport£  votre  faveur.'  It  will  be  observed  that  these 
versions,  all  practically  the  same,  are  probably  due  in  the 
first  instance  to  that  misconception  of  the  meaning  of  the 
word  favorcm  to  which  I  have  already  referred.  But 
even  taking  favorem  in  its  correct  sense  and  extending  it 
a  little  so  as  to  apply  to  Augustus's  '  support '  of  Vitruvius, 
I  do  not  see  how  in  te  contulit  favorem  can  mean  'ac- 
quired '  or  '  procured  me  thy  support.'  There  are  some 
examples  of  the  use  of  confero  gathered  in  the  Thesaurus 
(175,  1 6  ff.)  under  the  lemma  'iungendo  efficere  aliquid, 
componere,  acquirere,'  but,  after  a  careful  examination  of 
them,  I  do  not  find  one  which  confirms  that  meaning  here, 
and  to  adopt  it  would  oblige  us  to  take  te  as  ablative,  not 
accusative,  which  in  this  context  seems  impossible.  Marini 
evidently  felt  this  strongly,  for  he  emended  in  te  to  in  me. 
At  first  thought,  the  following  itaque  might  seem  logically 
to  call  for  this  interpretation.  Perhaps  it  would,  if  itaque 
fui praesto  must  be  rendered  'hence  I  have  been  appointed' 
(Gwilt,  cf .  Terquem,  p.  76) ;  but  there  is  nothing  of  this  sort 
necessarily  implied  in  praesto.  Vitruvius  merely  says :  '  I 
became  one  of  your  supporters,  and  hence  I  was  ready,'  etc. 
Aurelio  .  .  .  Minidio  .  .  .  Cornelia:  These  men  cannot 
be  identified  with  any  persons  otherwise  known  to  us.  The 
nomina  Aurelius  and  Cornelius  were  of  course  common 
under  the  republic,  but  the  gens  Minidia  is  elsewhere 


258  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

known,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  only  from  a  tombstone  found 
at  Ostia  (CIL.  14,  1356),  and  presumably  of  the  imperial 
period.  There  is  no  Ms.  evidence  for  the  reading  Numisio 
substituted  in  our  passage  by  Schneider,  Stratico,  and 
some  earlier  editors  in  order  to  identify  the  college  of 
Vitruvius  with  the  architect  of  the  theatre  of  Herculaneum 
(CIL.  10,  1446). 

4.  ad  apparationem  .  .  .  fui  praesto :  For  the  meaning 
and  the  syntax  of  praesto  with  ad  and  accusative,  cf .  Cic. 
Fam.  4,  8,  I,  ad  omnia  quae  tui  velint  ita  sim  praesto ; 
Deiot.  24,  non  solum  ad  hospitium  sed  ad  periculum  etiam 
atque  ad  aciem  praesto  fuit ;  and  for#<f  with  the  gerundive, 
Cic.  Caec.  29.  While  Vitruvius  does  not  distinctly  say  that 
he  was  appointed  to  any  particular  post  in  the  army  of 
Octavian,  it  is  natural  to  think  that  he  and  the  other  three 
men  whom  he  mentions  were  praefecti  fabrum.  The  office 
of  praefectus  fabrum  later  became  a  very  high  one  (some- 
thing like  that  of  engineer  in  chief  to  a  great  modern 
army),  and  among  its  duties  was  the  supervision  of  those 
qui  arma,  vehicula,  ceteraque  genera  tormentorum  vel  nova 
facerent  vel  quassata  repararent  ( Veget.  2,  1 1 ),  a  passage 
the  latter  part  of  which  recalls  Vitruvius's  description  of 
the  functions  which  he  was  ready  to  perform.  But  that 
such  a  functionary  accompanied  the  smaller  detached 
armies  of  the  republic  is  clear  from  Cic.  Fam.  3,  7,  4,  Q. 
Leptam,  praefectum  fabrum  meum.  Sometimes  there  were 
more  than  one;  cf.  Caesar  ap.  Cic.  Att.  9,  7,  C,  2,  duo 
praefecti  fabrum  Pompei  in  meam  potestatem  venerunt. 
Further  information  about  such  officers  is  given  by  Mar- 
quardt  (Rom.  Staatsv.  ii,  516),  and  by  Mommsen  (Rom. 
Staatsrecht,  i,  120;  ii,  98). 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VTTRUVIUS  259 

5.  refectionem  :  Syntactically  this  word  seems  to  belong 
only    with    scorpionum    reliquorumque   tormentorum,    and 
therefore  Vitruvius,  strictly  taken,  does  not  say  that  he  was 
ready  to  repair  ballistae,  or  to  supply  scorpiones  and  other 
tormenta.     But  I  can  hardly  believe  that  he  was  really 
such  a  specialist,  and  I  fancy  that  in  his  eagerness  to 
produce  the  fine  example  of  chiastic  order  displayed  in 
apparationem  .  ,  .  refectionem,    he    overlooked   the   exact 
sense.     Hence  I  have  taken  a  liberty  in  my  translation. 
Still  it  may  be  observed  that  in  the  tenth  book  (269,  10, 
ipse  faciundo}  Vitruvius  speaks  of  his  practical  experience 
in  constructing  ballistae  and  that  he  does  not  say  anywhere 
that  he  ever  made  other  kinds  of  artillery.     For  refectio  in 
the  literal  sense  of  'repair,'  cf.  140,  21,  and  Columella,  12,  3, 
9 ;  also  in  inscriptions,  cf .  Olcott,  Studies  in  Word  Forma- 
tion, 28.     For  apparatio,  cf.  54,  5  ;  124,  21 ;  Cic.  Off.  2,  56. 

6.  commoda  accept:  To  discover  the  meaning  of  the  word 
commoda  here  is  important,  because  upon  it  and  the  next 
two  sentences  is  based  the  commonly  accepted  view  that 
Vitruvius,  when  he  wrote  this  preface,  was  in  retirement, 
and  some  have  gone  so  far  as  to  translate  commoda  by 
'  pension.'     I  am  not  aware  that  its   meaning   has   ever 
been  thoroughly  studied,  and  I  do  not  find  the  word  treated 
in  the  books  on  military   antiquities.     Let  us  therefore 
examine  the  different  ways  in  which  it  is  employed  that 
might  fit  it  here.     Three  may  be  distinguished.     In  the 
first  place,  commoda  is  used  of  the  emoluments,  allowances, 
or  advantages  which  civil  or  military  officers,  or  certain 
public  slaves,  received  while  still  in  service  or  working.     It 
is  thus  applied  to  a  quaestor  by  Cicero,  Red.  in  Sen.  35, 
Plancius  qui  omnibus  provincialibus  ornamentiscommodisque 


260  ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

depositis  totam  suam  quaesturam  in  me  sustentando  et  con- 
servando  collocavit.  And  again  of  a  military  tribune,  Fam. 
7,  8,  I,  sum  admiratus  cur  tribunatus  commoda,  dempto 
praesertim  labore  militiae,  contempseris  (in  this  case  Caesar 
had  apparently  offered  Trebatius  a  military  tribuneship, 
with  exemption  from  duties).  Frontinus  in  his  work  on  the 
Roman  aqueducts  describes  (i  16  ff.)  the  two  gangs  of  public 
slaves  employed  upon  them ;  one  was  the  familia  publica, 
the  other  the  familia  Caesaris.  Then  he  goes  on  (119): 
commoda  publicae  familiae  ex  aerario  dantur  .  .  .  Caesaris 
familia  ex  fisco  accipit  commoda.  Here  the  word  commoda 
is  not  equivalent  to  our  '  wages '  which  are  paid  at  regular 
short  intervals,  but  it  seems  to  denote  an  annual  lump  sum 
given  to  these  public  slaves  every  year.1  And  in  the  case 
of  the  quaestor  and  the  tribune  mentioned  by  Cicero,  the 
word  does  not  mean  '  pay,'  for  we  know  that  officials  and 
officers  of  these  and  the  higher  ranks  were  not,  in  repub- 
lican times,  paid  what  we  understand  by  salaries.  Instead, 
they  got  free  quarters  and  transport,  rations,  their  outfit 
or  a  lump  sum  covering  it  (vasarium),  certain  rights  of 
requisitioning  for  necessaries  when  in  the  provinces,  and 
officers  on  the  staff  or  in  the  employ  of  higher  magistrates 
expected  to  receive  from  them,  or  from  the  treasury,  good 
service  rewards  in  the  way  of  '  gratifications '  or  free  gifts 
(congiaria,  beneficid)  which  also  seem  to  have  been  paid 
annually  in  a  lump  sum.2  It  was  '  chommoda  '  of  this  or 
any  other  sort3  for  which  Arrius  was  looking  when  he 

1  Mommsen,  Staatsrecht?  i,  323  ;  cf.  299,  n.  2. 

2  On  all  this  see  Mommsen,  ibid.,  294-300,  and  on  commoda  tribunatus, 
300,  n.  4. 

8  No  doubt:  it  covered  a  good  deal  of  what  we  now  call '  graft.' 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  26 1 

went  out  on  the  staff  of  Crassus  to  Syria  (Catullus  84).  In 
the  second  place,  commoda  is  used  in  the  sense  of  some 
form  of  gratuity  presented  to  soldiers  on  their  retirement 
from  service.  So  in  the  letter  of  Brutus  and  Cassius  to 
Antony  (Cic.  Fam.  n,  2,  3):  ea  re  denuntiatum  esse 
veteranis  quod de commodis  eorum  mense  lunio  laturus  esses; 
and  probably  the  word  has  this  meaning  in  Cicero  himself, 
L.  A.  2,  54,  putant  si  quam  spem  in  Cn.  Pompeio  exercitus 
Iiabeat  aut  agrorum  aut  aliorum  commodorum.  Suetonius 
certainly  thus  employs  it  several  times :  cf .  Aug.  49,  quid- 
quid  autem  ubique  militum  esset  ad  certam  stipendiorum 
praemiorumque  formulam  adstrinxit,  definitis  pro  gradu 
cuiusque  et  temporibus  militiae  et  commodis  missionum ; 
Cat.  44,  commoda  emeritae  militiae;  Nero  32,  commoda 
veteranorum ;  Vit.  15,  veteranorum  iustaeque  militiae  com- 
moda. See  also  an  African  inscription  (CIL.  8,  792): 
P.  Ennius  T,  F.  Epilli  A.  Quir.  Paccianus  commodis 
acceptis  ex  leg.  II  Aug.  ab.  imp.  Domitiano  Caesare  Aug. 
Ger.  cos.  VIII.  These  gratuities,  though  not  mentioned  in 
the  books  on  Roman  military  antiquities  under  the  name 
commoda,  do  appear  in  such  books  under  the  name/fltzmtt, 
and  this  indeed  is  the  term  employed  by  Augustus  in  the 
Monumentum  Ancyranum  3,  3 1  ff. :  militibus  quos  emeriteis 
stipendis  in  sua  municipia  remisi praemia  numerato  persolvi 
(cf.  also  3,  37).  And  Suetonius  combines  the  two  words  in 
Aug.  25,  alias  (legiones)  immodeste  missionem  postulantes 
citra  commoda  emeritorum  praemiorum  exauctoravit  (cf .  also 
Aug.  49,  cited  just  above).  There  is  no  evidence  that  these 
commoda  or  praemia  ever  took  the  form  of  a  stipend  paid 
annually  or  at  more  frequent  intervals  like  our  military 
pensions.  A  lump  sum  paid  at  the  time  of  discharge  is 


262  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

what  is  meant  by  them,1  and  we  know  that  Augustus  gave 
5000  denarii  to  praetorians  and  3000  denarii  to  legionaries 
(Dio  C.  55,  23,  cf.  Suet.  Aug.  49,  certam  praemiorum 
formulam,  more  fully  cited  above).  It  is  also  well  known 
that  Augustus  (at  least  in  his  earlier  period)  had  distributed 
lands  to  retiring  soldiers ;  cf.  Mon.  Anc.  1,19,  Us  omnibus 
agros  aut  pecuniam  pro  praediis  dedi,  and  Dio  C.  54,  25, 
ra  re  ITT;  otra  ot  TroXtrat  a-rparevcroiVTO,  /cat  ra 
o<ra  Trav<rd/ji,evoi,  rfjs  ar/Jareia?,  avrl  T?}?  p^wpa?  rjv 
act  TTore  yrovv,  \ijtyoivro.  This  statement  by  Dio  is  made 
of  the  year  741  (13  B.C.),  after  which  time  Mommsen  2 
thought  that  Augustus  determined  to  recompense  his  dis- 
charged soldiers  in  money.  Finally  there  is  no  evidence 
that  commoda  in  this  sense  were  given  to  retired  officers  of 
higher  grades,  though  we  may  readily  imagine  that  cen- 
turions and  lower  officers  received  them.  We  come  now  to 
the  third  usage  of  the  word  commoda,  still  somewhat  tech- 
nical, but  approaching  more  closely  to  the  very  common 
general  meaning  of  '  advantages '  than  does  either  of  the 
other  two.  In  this  usage  it  denotes  special  'privileges,' 
and  perhaps  it  does  not  occur  in  republican  Latin.  But 
it  comes  out  in  Suetonius,  Aug.  ^\,sacerdotum  et  numerum 
et  dignitatem  sed  et  commoda  auxit,  praecipue  Vestalium 
virgimtm.  Such  privileges  might  include  public  land  or 
money.3  In  another  place  Suetonius  himself  makes  clear 
what  privileges  he  means;  cf.  Cl.  18  f.,  naves  mercaturae 

1  Mommsen,  Res  Gestae  Aug.,  9  and  67 ;  Marquardt,  Rom.  Staatsv.?  i, 
122  ;  ii,  564. 

2  Res  Gestae  Aug.,  9  and  65. 

8  Marquardt,  Staatsv.?  ii,  80  f.  ;  iii,  223  ff.  For  commoda  in  this  usage  in 
inscriptions,  cf.  CIL.,  6,  971  (a  collegium  viclimariorum  in  the  time  of 
Hadrian),  and  CIL.,  6,  955. 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  263 

causa  fabricantibus  magna  commoda  constitute  pro  conditions 
cuiusque:  civi  vacationem  legis  Papiae  Poppaeae,  Latino 
ius  Quiritium,  feminis  ius  III  I liberorum.  Ovid  seems  to 
be  aware  of  this  sense  of  commoda  when  in  his  account  of 
the  rape  of  the  Sabine  women  (A.  A.  i,  131)  he  jestingly 
exclaims:  Romule,  militibus  scisti  dare  commoda  solus! 
Haec  mihi  si  dederis  commoda,  miles  ero.  And  Juvenal  in 
his  sixteenth  satire  speaks  of  the  privileges  of  a  military 
career  (the  civilian  won't  venture  to  strike  the  soldier  whom 
esprit  de  corps  protects ;  the  soldier  is  not  subject  to  the 
delays  of  law  courts ;  he  can  make  a  will  while  his  father 
is  alive),  and  he  calls  these  privileges  once  commoda  (7) 
and  twice  praemia  (i  and  35).  In  another  satire  (9,  89), 
Juvenal  uses  commoda  of  the  privileges  of  the  ius  trium 
liberorum.  Now  out  of  these  three  distinct  usages  of 
commoda,  which  does  Vitruvius  employ  in  our  preface? 
What  he  received  was  something  substantial,  for  in  the 
next  sentence  but  one  he  says  that  it  relieved  him  from  the 
fear  of  poverty  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  We  have  no 
evidence  that  commoda  in  the  third  sense  of  '  privileges ' 
would  apply  to  his  case ;  but  in  its  first  and  second  senses 
it  might  apply.  For  while  he  was  in  active  service  he  may 
have  received  commoda  of  the  first  kind  which  I  have 
mentioned,  that  is  emoluments  or  allowances,  and  perhaps 
also  good  service  rewards ;  cf.  Cic.  Fam.  5,  20,  7,  quod 
scribis  de  beneficiis?-  scito  a  me  et  tribunes  militaris  et 
praefectos  et  contubernalis  dumtaxat  meos  delates  esse.  We 
do  not  know  at  all  how  much  money  or  land  was  given  as 

1  It  is  perhaps  a  mere  coincidence  that  Vitruvius  uses  this  same  word 
just  below  :  to  bcneficio  obligatus  (2, 8).  On  beneficia,  see  Mommsen,  Staatsr.* 
ii,  1126,  n.  I. 


264  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

a  good  service  reward  to  any  officer,  but  it  seems  improbable 
that  a  functionary  so  humble  as  Vitruvius  would  have 
received  much.  And  so  perhaps,  when  the  general  peace 
was  made,  Octavian  bestowed  upon  him  commoda  of  the 
second  kind,  a  good  service  reward  in  the  form  of  a  retiring 
gratuity  (although,  as  I  have  said,  we  have  no  evidence 
that  such  was  given  to  any  except  common  soldiers),  or  he 
may  have  continued  him  in  office  without  any  actual  duties, 
just  as  Julius  Caesar  offered  a  sinecure  tribuneship  to 
Trebatius.  And  the  word  primo  in  the  next  sentence  in 
Vitruvius  shows  that  he  had  received  commoda  more  than 
once.  But  obviously  all  this  is  pure  speculation.  The 
word  commoda  in  itself  does  not  tell  us  whether  Vitruvius 
had  retired  or  not;  therefore  it  cannot  be  rendered  by 
'  pay '  or  '  emoluments  ' ;  or  by  '  pension/  for  this  implies 
the  modern  practice  of  paying  a  stipend  at  regular  inter- 
vals. The  translator  must  select  a  word  or  phrase  which 
will  cover  all  the  contingencies  which  have  been  considered 
here,  and  hence  I  have  selected  '  rewards  for  good  service.' 

primo:  'for  the  first  time,'  'originally.'  So  in  209,  25, 
cum  primo  aqua  a  capite  inmittitur ;  36,  2,  cum  ergo  haec 
it  a  fuerint  primo  constituta . 

7.  cum  tribuisti  .  .  .  servasti:  these  two  verbs  do  not 
denote  coincidence  of  action,  but  here,  as  well  as  in  three 
other  passages  in  Vitruvius  (50,  12;  59,  26;  157,  2),  we 
have  the  perfect  indicative  in  both  parts  of  a  sentence,  the 
protasis  of  which  is  a  survival  of  the  old  indicative  narra- 
tive turn-clause.  On  such  sentences,  see  Hale,  The  cum- 
construction,  204  ff.,  where  he  cites  the  same  combination 
occurring,  for  instance,  in  Caes.  B.  C.  3,  87,  7 ;  Bell.  Hisp. 
1 8,  2 ;  Galba  ap.  Cic.  Fam.  10,  30,  4. 


THE   PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  265 

recognitionem :  This  is  a  rare  word,  and  it  occurs  first  in 
Vitruvius.  Paucker  (Meletemata  Altera  48)  cites  only 
Livy  for  it,  and  Cooper  in  his  Senno  Plebeius  (4  ff.)  does 
not  include  it  in  the  list  of  the  ninety-four  abstracts  in  -tio 
which  Vitruvius  added  to  the  Latin  language.  It  is  not 
found  in  Cicero J  (though  he  added  hundreds  of  such  ab- 
stracts) nor  in  Caesar.  Our  study  of  its  meaning  must 
begin  with  the  remark  that  it  seems  never  to  signify  a 
'  recognition '  in  the  modern  sense  of  an  acknowledgment 
of  a  person's  services,  standing,  or  the  like.  Neither  does 
it  mean  'favor'  ('Gewogenheit,'  Reber).  In  the  other 
sense  in  which  we  use  '  recognition, '  that  is,  to  denote  a 
'  knowing  again '  of  somebody  whom  we  have  known  before, 
it  is  found  twice  in  Latin,  —  both  times  in  that  form  of  the 
well-known  story  of  Androcles  and  the  lion  as  it  is  related 
by  Gellius ;  cf.  Index  Capit.  5,  14,  recognitionem  inter  se 
mutuam  ex  vetere  notitia  hominis  et  leonis;  and  5>  !4>  *4» 
turn  quasi  mutua  recognitione  facta.  This  meaning  of  the 
substantive  is  found  also  in  the  verb  recognosco;  cf.  Cic. 
Fam.  12,  12,  i,  and  T.  D.  i,  57;  and  particularly  Livy  5, 
1 6,  7,  receptis  agrorum  suorum  spoliis  Romam  revertuntur. 
Biduum  ad  recognoscendas  res  datum  dominis  ;  tertio  incog- 
nita sub  hasta  veniere.  But  it  is  at  once  clear  that  this 
meaning  of  recognitio  will  not  suit  the  passage  in  Vitruvius, 
where  there  is  no  question  of  the  renewal  of  an  acquaint- 
ance between  him  and  Augustus.  We  must  therefore  seek 
another  meaning,  and  we  find  at  once  that,  except  in  Gellius, 
it  conveys  but  one  idea,  —  that  of  an  investigation,  inspec- 
tion, or  review.  Thus  Livy  has  it  in  42,  19,  \,pcr  recogni- 
tionem Postumi  consults  magnapars  agri  Campani  rccuperata 

1  Unless  the  reading  of  inferior  codd.  be  accepted  in  Verr,  4,  no. 


266  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

in  publicum  erat  (cf.  42,  i.  6,  senatui  placuit  L.  Postumium 
consulem  ad  agrum publicum  a  private  terminandtim  in  Cam- 
paniaw.  ire).  Similarly  of  an  inspection  of  clothing  and 
tools  in  Coll.  n,  i,  21,  and  of  the  equites  in  Suet.  Claud. 
1 6.  Seneca  has  it  of  self-examination  (recognitionem  sui, 
Ira  3,  36,  2).  The  elder  Pliny,  in  his  celebrated  account  of 
the  habits  of  the  ants  (N.  H.  n,  109),  says  that  they  have 
regular  times  on  which  they  meet  and  inspect  together  the 
stock  which  they  have  gathered :  et  quoniam  ex  diverse 
convehunt  altera  alterius  ignara,  certi  dies  ad  recognitionem 
mutuam  nundinis  dantur.  Here  the  context  shows  that 
recognitionem  does  not  mean  a  recognition  of  the  ants  by 
each  other,  and  as  ants  live  a  community  life  it  does  not 
signify  the  identification  or  '  knowing  again '  of  individual 
property,  as  in  the  Livian  passage  (5,  16,  7)  already  quoted. 
This  same  idea  of  an  investigation  or  inquiry  survived  in 
low  Latin ;  cf .  Du  Cange  (ed.  Favre),  s.v.,  where  we  find 
that  the  word  was  used  in  charters  to  denote  inquiries  into 
cases  of  disputed  lands  (cf.  Livy  42,  19,  i,  quoted  above). 
These  are  the  only  meanings  of  recognitio  which  I  have 
found  in  ancient  Latin.  Although  Vitruvius  does  not  use 
the  word  elsewhere,  yet  he  has  the  participle  recognoscentes 
once  (213,  1 1 ),  where,  after  speaking  of  the  useful  discov- 
eries made  by  great  men,  he  adds :  quae  recognoscentes 
necessario  his  tribui  honores  oportere  homines  confitebuntur, 
'on  reviewing  these  discoveries,  people  will  admit  that 
honors  ought  to  be  bestowed  upon  them.'  In  this  sense, 
recognosco,  though  a  less  technical  word,  is  often  a  synonym 
of  recenseo,  as  a  glance  at  any  good  lexicon  will  show. 
This  is  well  illustrated  by  Columella,  n,  i,  20,  turn  etiam 
per  ferias  instrumentum  rusticum  (vilicus)  recognoscat  et 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  267 

saepius  inspiciat  ferramenta  as  compared  with  11,  i,  21, 
tarn  vestem  servitionim  quam,  tit  dixi,ferramenta  bis  debebit 
singulis  mensibus  recensere,  Nam  frequens  recognitio  nee 
impunitatis  spent  nee  peccandi  locum  praebet.  Now  in 
the  passage  in  our  preface,  to  what  does  recognitio  refer  ? 
Obviously  to  commoda,  for  Vitruvius  says :  '  after  originally 
bestowing  these  upon  me,  you  continued  (servasti,  see 
below)  your  recognitio '  —  which  can  only  mean  '  your  re- 
cognitio  of  these  commoda'  It  is  natural  to  suppose  that 
the  Roman  ruler  reviewed  or  revised  at  intervals  the  list  of 
persons  who  were  receiving  commoda,  and  that  at  such 
times  suggestions  for  additions  to  the  list  might  be  made. 
Persons  whose  names  were  in  the  list  might  well  be  de- 
scribed as  recogniti,  just  as  recensi  was  used  of  persons  in 
the  list  of  those  who  received  corn  at  the  public  cost;  cf. 
Suet.  Caes.  41,  in  demortiiorum  locum  ex  Us  qui  recensi  non 
essent.  And  the  act  of  setting  a  name  in  the  list  would 
thus,  by  a  slight  extension  of  meaning,  be  expressed  by  the 
word  recognitio.  But  as  Vitruvius  had  at  some  earlier  time 
(primo)  received  commoda,  the  act  in  his  case  was  a  renewal, 
and  this  to  his  mind  may  have  been  further  indicated  by 
the  prefix  re-  in  recognitio,  especially  as  contrasted  with 
prime.  And  we  may  perhaps  also  compare  the  common 
phrase  found  in  the  diplomata  of  discharged  soldiers: 
descriptum  et  recognitum  ex  tabula  aenea,  etc.  (Dessau, 
Inscr.  Lat.  i,  1986  ff.).  Our  whole  sentence,  then,  may 
best  be  rendered  :  'After  your  first  bestowal  of  these  upon 
me,  you  continued  to  renew  them  on  recommendation  of 
your  sister.' 

sororis :  Octavia,  the  sister  of  Augustus,  died  in  1 1  B.C. 
(Liv.  Per.  140;  Dio  C.  54,  35>     We  know  that  she  had 


268  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

influence  with  her  brother ;  cf .  her  successful  appeal  for 
the  proscribed  husband  of  Tanusia  (Dio  C.  47,  7).  A  book 
was  dedicated  to  her  by  Athenodorus,  son  of  Sandon 
(cf.  Plut.  Popl.  17,  'A#77PoS&>/>09  6  SaySwvo?  ev  r<a  77/305 
'Qtcraoviav  rrjv  KcuW/xx?  aSeX^y).  See  also  Gardthausen, 
Aug.  u.  seine  Zeit,  i,  217.  In  regard  to  the  theory  that 
Vitruvius  wrote  under  Titus,  it  may  be  remarked  that  he 
also  had  a  sister,  Domitilla,  but  that  she  died  before  Ves- 
pasian came  to  the  throne  (Suet.  Vesp.  3),  and  consequently 
before  Titus  attained  to  much  power. 

commendationem :  cf.  Cic.  Cat.  I,  28,  hominem  per  te 
cognitum,  nulla  commendatione  tnaiorum.  The  word  is 
used  elsewhere  three  times  by  Vitruvius :  31,  9;  32,  26; 
63,  ii. 

servasti:  'you  continued.'  For  this  meaning  cf.  Caes. 
B.  C.  3,  89,  i,  superius  institutum  servans  (so  also  3,  84,  3, 
and  75,  2);  Cic.  Clu.  89,  ut  consuetudinem  servem.  Simi- 
larly in  Vitruvius  240,  2itservat  administrationem ;  'keeps 
the  works  going,'  etc.  This  use  of  servo  is  not  found  else- 
where in  Vitruvius,  who  happens  to  employ  it,  except  in 
these  two  passages,  only  in  connection  with  concrete  things 
(poma,  16,  20  \fructus,  145,  20 ;  frumenat,  147,  23  ;  structu- 
res, 53,  ii ;  crassitude,  75,  19;  cavo,  47,  11). 

8.  beneficio :  It  is  true  that  this  word  may  possibly  con- 
vey here  the  technical  sense  of  Cic.  Fam.  5,  20,   7  (see 
above,  p.  263,  and  note  i) ;    but  as  Vitruvius  elsewhere 
employs   it  only  generally  (85,  ii;    133,  15;    151,   n),  I 
render  it  by  '  favor,'  which  fits  both  usages. 

9.  haec  tibi  scribere  coepi :  '  I  began  to  write  this  work  for 
you. '     Here  haec  refers  to  the  De  Architectural  as  now  fully 
completed,  not  to  Vitruvius's  preliminary  collections  (see 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS          269 

above  on  scripta  et  explicata,  i,  7).  For  this  preface  was 
written,1  or  at  least  professes  to  have  been  written,  after 
the  whole  treatise  was  finished.  The  dative  tibi  is  sup- 
ported by  Cic.  Top.  4,  cum  tu  mihi  meisque  multo  saepe 
scripsisses,  although  ad  and  the  accusative  seems  to  be 
commoner  in  dedications  ;  cf.  Cic.  Att.  14,  20,  3,  cum  scrip- 
sissem,  ad  eum  de  Optimo  genere  dicendi;  so  Lael.  4  (scriptus 
ad  te);  Off.  i,  4.  The  work  was  intended,  Vitruvius  says 
here,  for  the  personal  use  of  his  patron,  to  assist  him  in  the 
ways  indicated  in  lines  10-16.  But  another  reason  is 
given  in  160,  6  ff.,  namely,  the  lack  of  writings  on  architec- 
ture in  the  Latin  language. 

10.  te  aedificavisse  et  nunc  aedificare:  among  the  im- 
portant early  buildings  of  Octavian  which  Vitruvius  may 
have  in  mind  are  the  aedes  divi  luli  (cf.  70,  18),  begun  in 
42  B.C.  and  finished  at  least  as  early  as  the  year  37,  when 
it  appears  on  coins : 2  and  the  curia  lulia,  projected  by 
Julius  Caesar  and  dedicated  by  Octavian  in  29  (Dio  C.  5 1, 
22).  Other  buildings  of  course  had  been  planned,  and 
some  of  them  may  have  been  finished  before  Vitruvius 
published  his  work.3 

animadverti  .  .  .  te  .  .  .  curam  habiturum:  Schneider 
found  fault  with  the  use  of  the  fut  inf.  with  the  verb  ani- 
madverto  and  thought  that  some  such  word  as  spero  or 
confido  had  dropped  out  in  the  latter  part  of  this  long  sen- 
tence. But  Vitruvius  has  the  future  also  in  32,  7,  animad- 

1  Mommsen's  expression  to  the  contrary  (Res  Gestae  Augusti,  81)  seems  to 
me  very  strange.    If  Sontheimer's  theory  (see  above,  p.  244,  note  i )  be  adopted, 
perhaps  we  should  translate :    '  I  set  about  dedicating  this  work  to  you.' 

2  Mommsen,  ibid.,  80. 

•See  Mommsen,  ibid.,  79-82,  and  Sontheimer,  120. 


2/O  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

verto  fore  ut,  etc. ;  and  cf.  Cic.  Div.  I,  112,  animadverterat 
olearum  ubertatemfore. 

1 2.  tradantur :  the  emendation  of  Schneider ;  traderen- 
tur,  codd.     The  error,  as  Rose  suggests  in  his  second  edi- 
tion, may  be  due  to  the  preceding  gestarum. 

13.  conscripsi:  '  I  have  composed,'   'draw  up';    cf .  the 
Thesaurus,  s.v.,  375,  36,  under  the  lemma  '  scribendo  com- 
ponere,  litteris  mandare.'     It  seems  unlikely  that  this  word 
ever    means   'compile'   in  Vitruvius.     It  might  possibly 
have  this  meaning  in  218,  14,  his  auctoribus  fretus  sensibus 
eorum   adhibitls  et  consiliis  ea  volumina  conscripsi ;   but 
this  is  improbable  in  view  of   all  the   other  passages   in 
which  it  appears  (5,  28  ;  134,7;  r42>7>  I5l>2°>  I59»  2I)> 
and  of  the  use  of  conscriptio,  'treatise,'  three  times  (103, 
14;  104,4;   1SS>  IO)-     Cf.  also  Cic.   Top.  5,  itaque  haec, 
cum   mecum  libros  non  haberem,  memoria  repetita  in  ipsa 
navigatione  conscripsi  tibique  ex  itinere  misi;  Verr.  2,  122, 
leges  conscribere ;  Brut.  46,  praecepta  conscribere  (and  so 
Vitr.  5,  28;  159,  21). 

praescriptiones  terminatas :  '  definite  rules  ' ;  cf .  '  be- 
stimmte  Vorschriften '  (Reber).  Vitruvius  always  uses 
praescriptio  in  this  sense:  cf.  62,  8;  121,  23;  204,  13; 
280,  10.  In  all  these  passages  he  promises  success  to 
those  who  follow  the  'rules.'  See  also  his  use  of  the 
verb  praescribo  in  5,  19  and  83,  17;  also  Cic.  Acad.  2,  140, 
praescriptionem  naturae;  T.D.4,  22,praescriptione  rationis. 
The  verb  termino  appears  in  only  one  other  place  in 
Vitruvius,  64,  20,  terminavi  finitionibus,  '  I  have  defined 
the  limits ' ;  but  cf.  Cic.  Fin.  I,  46,  ipsa  natura  divitias 
.  .  .  et parabiles  et  terminatas.  Further  light  on  the  mean- 
ing of  the  verb  may  be  got  from  the  use  of  the  substantive 


THE  PREFACE  OF  VITRUVIUS  271 

terminatio,  which  occurs  thirteen  times  in  Vitruvius.  In 
five  of  these  it  means  '  limits.'  (36,  2^,finire  terminationi- 
bus,  cf.  64,  20,  terminavi  finitionibus  just  quoted  above ; 
28,8;  67,20;  112,6;  113,21);  'end'  in  103,  13;  'ter- 
minating point,'  135,  21 ;  'boundary,'  203,  5;  232,  2; 
'departments,'  12,  8;  'extremities,'  in,  2;  'rules'  or 
'laws,'  155,  16;  'scope,'  32,  28. 

1 6.  disciplinae :  'art,'  used  of  architecture  in  133,  26; 
160,  9;  of  other  arts  in  6,  20;  10,  11,  and  14;  36,  6;  224, 

23- 

TRANSLATION 

While  your  divine  intelligence  and  will,  Imperator  Caesar, 
were  engaged  in  acquiring  the  right  to  command  the  world, 
and  while  your  fellow-citizens,  when  all  their  enemies  had 
been  laid  low  by  your  invincible  valor,  were  glorying  in 
your  triumph  and  victory,  —  while  all  foreign  nations  were 
in  subjection  awaiting  your  beck  and  call,  and  the  Roman 
people  and  senate,  released  from  their  alarm,  were  begin- 
ning to  be  guided  by  your  most  noble  conceptions  and 
policies,  I  hardly  dared,  in  view  of  your  serious  employ- 
ments, to  publish  my  writings  and  long-considered  ideas 
on  architecture,  for  fear  of  subjecting  myself  to  your  dis- 
pleasure by  an  unseasonable  interruption.  But  when  I 
saw  that  you  were  giving  your  attention  not  only  to  the 
welfare  of  society  in  general  and  to  the  establishment  of 
public  order,  but  also  to  the  providing  of  public  buildings 
intended  for  purposes  of  utility,  so  that  not  only  should  the 
State  have  been  enriched  with  provinces  by  your  means,  but 
that  the  greatness  of  its  power  might  likewise  be  attended 
with  distinguished  authority  in  its  public  buildings,  I 
thought  that  I  ought  to  take  the  first  opportunity  to  lay 


2/2  ADDRESSES  AND  ESSAYS 

before  you  my  writings  on  this  theme.  For  in  the  first 
place  it  was  this  subject  which  made  me  known  to  your 
father,  to  whom  I  was  devoted  on  account  of  his  great 
qualities.  After  the  council  of  heaven  gave  him  a  place 
in  the  dwellings  of  immortal  life  and  transferred  your 
father's  power  to  your  hands,  my  devotion  continuing 
unchanged  as  I  remembered  him  inclined  me  to  support 
you.  And  so  with  Marcus  Aurelius,  Publius  Minidius, 
and  Gnaeus  Cornelius,  I  was  ready  to  supply  and  repair 
ballistae,  scorpiones,  and  other  artillery,  and  I  have  re- 
ceived rewards  for  good  service  with  them.  After  your 
first  bestowal  of  these  upon  me,  you  continued  to  renew 
them  on  the  recommendation  of  your  sister. 

Owing  to  this  favor  I  need  have  no  fear  of  want  to  the 
end  of  my  life,  and  being  thus  laid  under  obligation  I 
began  to  write  this  work  for  you,  because  I  saw  that  you 
have  built  and  are  now  building  extensively,  and  that  in 
future  also  you  will  take  care  that  our  public  and  private 
buildings  shall  be  worthy  to  go  down  to  posterity  by  the 
side  of  your  other  splendid  achievements.  I  have  drawn 
up  definite  rules  to  enable  you,  by  observing  them,  to  have 
personal  knowledge  of  the  quality  both  of  existing  build- 
ings and  of  those  which  are  yet  to  be  constructed.  For  in 
the  following  books  I  have  disclosed  all  the  principles  of 
the  art. 


OCCASIONAL  VERSES  273 


GREX  •  SPECTATORIBVS  •  S1 

O  ALVETE,  o  domini,  graves  magistri, 
O    Doctrina  satis  et  super  repleti. 
Salvete,  o  comites  laboriosi, 
Et  quantum  est  comitum  otiosiorum. 
Conlegi  venerabiles  alumni 
Salvete,  o  'iuvenes  senesque  salsi. 
Vos  salvere  boni  hospites  iubemus, 
Eruditi  homines  ineruditi. 
Matronae  nitidae  puellulaeque 
Salvete,  o  decus  aureum  theatri. 
Spectatoribus  omnibus  salutem ! 
Vobis  fabula  palliata  agetur. 
Adeste  aequo  animo,  favete  linguis, 
Neve  parcite  nos  iuvare  plausu. 


1  From  the  programme  for  the  production  of  Phormio  at  Harvard,  April 
19,  1894. 

273 


2/4 


ADDRESSES   AND   ESSAYS 

D  •  M 

FRANCISCI  •  IACOBI  •  CHILD1 

MUSIS  qui  fuerit  deditus  aureis, 
non  vanis  moriens  planctibus  indiget; 
dulcem  nam  socium  Pierides  domo 
dulces  accipiunt  sua. 

Ergo  qua  proprius  vatibus  est  honor 
sedem  Tu  quoque  habes,  vatibus  intimus, 
sellers  ipse  lyrae  prisca  Britannicae 
terris  carmina  pandere. 

Te  clarum  studiis,  Te  sapientia 
cantabunt  alii,  non  ego  grandia: 
o  carum  caput,  o  sollicitam  fidem, 
vocem  pauperibus  bonam. 

Nobis  heu  miseris  candidus  occidit  — 
at  non  ille  miser,  quern  vocat  inclutus 
UNAM  qui  cecinit,  maximus  et  senex 
et  vates  sine  compari. 

O  quales  comites,  quantaque  gaudia! 
expectatus  earn  pervenit  ad  plagam 
qua  ventus  Zephyri  spirat  amabilis 
et  campi  redolent  rosis. 

1  From  the  Harvard  Graduate?  Magazine,  1896,  v,  2IO. 


OCCASIONAL  VERSES  27$ 


ANA6HMATIKON l 

Xcupe,  vrdrep  pey'  dpio-re,  Kal  evpeveays  raSe 
Kapjrbv  crol  (frepoftev  (r&v  airo 
yap  ere  <f>i\ijv  veapol  %epl 

evavdfj  yaiav  a<f>ifc6/j£0a. 


l  Prefixed  to  Vol.  xii  (1901)  of  the  Harvard  Studies  in  Classical  Philology, 
which  was  dedicated  to  Professor  W.  W.  Goodwin. 


LANE'S    LATIN    GRAMMAR 

Revised  Edition,  $1.50 

By    GEORGE    M.    LANE,     Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor 

Emeritus    of  Latin,    Harvard    University 


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HARPER'S  LATIN  DICTIONARY 

Founded    on    the   translation  of  Freund's   Latin-German 
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LEWIS'S  ELEMENTARY  LATIN  DICTIONARY 

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SMITH'S  ENGLISH-LATIN  DICTIONARY 

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A   HANDBOOK   OF   GREEK 
ARCHAEOLOGY 

By  HAROLD  NORTH  FOWLER,  Professor  of  Greek, 
Western  Reserve  University,  and  JAMES  RIGNALL 
WHEELER,  Professor  of  Greek  Archaeology  and  Art, 
Columbia  University. 

1 2. 00 


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all  students  of  Greek  literature ;   to  the  general  reader,  who 
desires  only  a  general  knowledge  of  Greek  art ;  and  especially 
to  persons  interested  in  Greek  art  who  visit  museums  in  this 
country  or  in    Europe.      It  gives  a  good  conspectus   of  the 
whole  field,   with  a  short  but  authoritative  treatment  of  each 
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has  been  made  in  the  knowledge  of  Greek  archaeology  through 
several  centuries  until  the  present  day.  In  the  discussions  of 
prehistoric  art,  architecture,  sculpture,  terracottas,  bronzes 
and  work  in  gold  and  silver,  coins,  gems,  vases,  painting 
and  mosaic,  the  progress  of  art  is  sketched  with  reference  to 
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manifestation  in  archaic  forms  and  following  out  the  gradual 
advance  of  skill  and  the  subsequent  decline. 
*f[  The  illustrations,  412  in  all,  have  been  carefully  selected 
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SYNTAX    OF 
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FROM  HOMER  TO  DEMOSTHENES 


PART  I.     THE  SYNTAX  OF  THE  SIMPLE 

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evolution. 

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THAYER'S  GREEK-ENGLISH  LEXICON  OF 
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AUTENRIETH'S  HOMERIC  DICTIONARY 

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HARPER'S    DICTIONARY    OF    CLASSICAL 
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SMITH'S    DICTIONARY  OF   GREEK   AND 
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ANTHON,  LL.  D. 

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STUDENTS'  CLASSICAL  DICTIONARY 

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^[  Copies  of  our  price  lists,  or  of  special  circulars,  in  which 
these  books  are  described  at  greater  length  than  the  space 
limitations  of  the  catalogue  permit,  will  be  mailed  to  any 
address  on  request. 

^j  All  correspondence  should  be  addressed  to  the  nearest 
of  the  following  offices  of  the  company :  New  York,  Cincin- 
nati, Chicago,  Boston,  Atlanta,  San  Francisco. 


AMERICAN    BOOK    COMPANY 


A    000  047  597    o 


